We are our own devils; we drive ourselves out of our Edens.

We don't get to know people when they come to us; we must go to them to find out what they are like.

To create something you must be something.

Love is an ideal thing, marriage a real thing

And those whom once my song had cheered and gladdened, If still they live, rove through the world now saddened.

The misfortune in the state is, that nobody can enjoy life in peace, but that everybody must govern; and in art, that nobody will enjoy what has been produced, but that every one wants to reproduce on his own account.

It would be a lowly art that allowed itself to be understood all at once.