Mastery passes often for egotism.

We are pantheists when we study nature, polytheists when we write poetry, monotheists in our morality.

With knowledge comes more doubt.

He who only tastes his error will long dwell with it, will take delight in it as in a singular felicity; while he who drains it to the dregs will, if he be not crazy, find it to be what it is.

Commonplaceness, the surrender to the average, that good which is not bad but still the enemy of the best - That is our besetting danger.

Great thoughts and a pure heart, that is what we should ask from God.

What must the English and French think of the language of our philosophers when we Germans do not understand it ourselves?