There are writers in Germany who drink the Absolute like water; and there are books in which even the dogs make references to the Infinite.

He who has religion will speak poetry. But philosophy is the tool with which to seek and discover religion.

The naive is what is or appears to be natural, individual, or classical to the point of irony or to the point of continuous alternation of self-creation and self-destruction. If it is only instinct, then it is childlike, childish, or silly; if it is only intention, it becomes affectation.

Many works of the ancients have become fragments. Many works of the moderns are fragments at the time of their origin.

Women do not have as great a need for poetry because their own essence is poetry.

When the author has no idea of what to reply to a critic, he then likes to say: you could not do it better anyway. This is the same as if a dogmatic philosopher reproached a skeptic for not being able to devise a system.

The German national character is a favorite subject of character experts, probably because the less mature a nation, the more she is an object of criticism and not of history.