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.

The two basic maxims of the so-called historical criticism are the postulate of the common and the axiom of the ordinary. Postulate of the common: everything really great, good, and beautiful, is improbable, since it is extraordinary and therefore at least suspect. Axiom of the ordinary: our conditions and environment must have existed everywhere, for they are really so natural.

In the world of language, or in other words in the world of art and liberal education, religion necessarily appears as mythology or as Bible.

The naive is what is or appears to be natural, individual, or classical to the point of irony or to the point of continuous alternation of self-creation and self-destruction. If it is only instinct, then it is childlike, childish, or silly; if it is only intention, it becomes affectation.

Nothing truly convincing - which would possess thoroughness, vigor, and skill - has been written against the ancients as yet; especially not against their poetry.

A family can develop only with a loving woman as its center.

Poetry should describe itself, and always be simultaneously poetry and the poetry of poetry.