Poetry can be criticized only through poetry. A critique which itself is not a work of art, either in content as representation of the necessary impression in the process of creation, or through its beautiful form and in its liberal tone in the spirit of the old Roman satire, has no right of citizenship in the realm of art.

Like Leibniz's possible worlds, most men are only equally entitled pretenders to existence. There are few existences.

The meanest authors have at least this similarity with the great author of heaven and earth, that they usually say after a completed day of work: "And behold, what he had done was good.

One has only as much morality as one has philosophy and poetry.

Since poetry is infinitely valuable, I do not understand why it should be more valuable than this or that which is also infinitelyvaluable. There are artists who perhaps do not think art to be too great, for this is impossible, and yet they are not free enough to be able to rise above their own best accomplishments.

Every relationship of man to the infinite is religion, namely of a man in the full abundance of his humanity. Whenever a mathematician calculates infinity, that, to be sure, is not religion. Infinity conceived in this abundance is the Godhead.

The historian is a prophet looking backward.