The content of the ideal is a desire to return to the perfection of an imaginary past.

Quite apart from any conscious program, the great cultural historians have always been historical morphologists: seekers after theforms of life, thought, custom, knowledge, art.

A crude mind could easily think: something is valid, therefore it is true.

Every age yearns for a more beautiful world. The deeper the desperation and the depression about the confusing present, the more intense that yearning.

Revolution as an ideal concept always preserves the essential content of the original thought: sudden and lasting betterment.

One does not realize the historical sensation as a re-experiencing, but as an understanding that is closely related to the understanding of music, or rather of the world by means of music.

Culture requires in the first place a certain balance of material and spiritual values.