Artists have a double relationship towards nature: they are her master and her slave at the same time. They are her slave in so far as they must work with means of this world so as to be understood; her master in so far as they subject these means to their higher goals and make them subservient to them.

It is not enough to have knowledge; one must apply it. It is not enough to have wishes; one must also accomplish it.

One is never satisfied with the portrait of a person that one knows.

The one who acts is always without conscience; nobody has a conscience but the contemplative person.

The miller imagines that the corn grows only to make his mill turn.

One must keep repeating the Truth.

No sacred fane requires us to submit to insult.