Beethoven always sounds to me like the upsetting of a bag of nails, with here and there an also dropped hammer.

All great art is the work of the whole living creature, body and soul, and chiefly of the soul.

Everything that you can see in the world around you presents itself to your eyes only as an arrangement of patches of different colors.

Without seeking, truth cannot be known at all. It can neither be declared from pulpits, nor set down in articles, nor in any wise prepared and sold in packages ready for use. Truth must be ground for every man by itself out of it such, with such help as he can get, indeed, but not without stern labor of his own.

The art which we may call generally art of the wayside, as opposed to that which is the business of men's lives, is, in the best sense of the word, Grotesque.

[For men] to feel their souls withering within them, unthanked, to find their whole being sunk into an unrecognized abyss, to be counted off into a heap of mechanism numbered with its wheels, and weighed with its hammer strokes - this, nature bade not, - this, God blesses not, - this, humanity for no long time is able to endure.

To yield reverence to another, to hold ourselves and our lives at his disposal, is not slavery; often, it is the noblest state in which a man can live in this world.