To disrespect the masses is moral; to honor them, lawful.

How many authors are there among writers? Author means originator.

Genius is, to be sure, not a matter of arbitrariness, but rather of freedom, just as wit, love, and faith, which once shall become arts and disciplines. We should demand genius from everybody, without, however, expecting it.

Novels are the Socratic dialogues of our time. Practical wisdom fled from school wisdom into this liberal form.

If you want to see mankind fully, look at a family. Within the family minds become organically one, and for this reason the family is total poetry.

What is lost in the good or excellent translation is precisely the best.

If the essence of cynicism consists in preferring nature to art, virtue to beauty and science; in not bothering about the letter of things -- to which the Stoic strictly adheres -- but in looking up to the spirit of things; in absolute contempt of all economic values and political splendor, and in courageous defence of the rights of independent freedom; then Christianity would be nothing but universal cynicism.