A genuinely free and educated man should be able to tune himself, as one tunes a musical instrument, absolutely arbitrarily, at his convenience at any time and to any degree, philosophically or philologically, critically or poetically, historically or rhetorically, in ancient or modern form.

It is peculiar to mankind to transcend mankind.

In England, wit is at least a profession, if not an art. everything becomes professional there, and even the rogues of that islandare pedants. So are the "wits" there too. They introduce into reality absolute freedom whose reflection lends a romantic and piquant air to wit, and thus they live wittily; hence their talent for madness. They die for their principles.

Life is writing. The sole purpose of mankind is to engrave the thoughts of divinity onto the tablets of nature.

Through artists mankind becomes an individual, in that they unite the past and the future in the present. They are the higher organ of the soul, where the life spirits of entire external mankind meet and in which inner mankind first acts.

Mathematics is, as it were, a sensuous logic, and relates to philosophy as do the arts, music, and plastic art to poetry.

The poetry of this one is called philosophical, of that one philological, of a third rhetorical, and so on. Which is then the poetic poetry?