The life of the artist should be distinguished from that of all other people, even in external habits. They are Brahmins, a higher caste, not ennobled by birth, however, but through deliberate self-initiation.

An artist is he for whom the goal and center of life is to form his mind.

Wit is the appearance, the external flash, of fantasy. Hence its divinity and the similarity to the wit of mysticism.

A so-called happy marriage corresponds to love as a correct poem to an improvised song.

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.

A definition of poetry can only determine what poetry should be and not what poetry actually was and is; otherwise the most concise formula would be: Poetry is that which at some time and some place was thus named.

Just as the Romans were the only nation that was truly a nation, so our age is the first genuine age.