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

The most important thing in love is the sense for one another, and the highest thing the faith in one another. Devotion is the expression of that faith, and pleasure can revive and enhance that sense, even if not create it, as is commonly thought. Therefore, sensuality can delude bad persons for a short time into thinking they could love each other.

The analytical writer observes the reader as he is; accordingly, he makes his calculation, sets his machine to make the appropriate effect on him. The synthetic writer constructs and creates his own reader; he does not imagine him as resting and dead, but lively and advancing toward him. He makes that which he had invented gradually take shape before the reader's eyes, or he tempts him to do the inventing for himself. He does not want to make a particular effect on him, but rather enters into a solemn relationship of innermost symphilosophy or sympoetry.

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

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.

Every form of life is in its origin not natural, but divine and human; for it must spring from love, just as there can be no reason without spirit.

Since philosophy now criticizes everything it comes across, a critique of philosophy would be nothing less than a just reprisal.