Nothing is more witty and grotesque than ancient mythology and Christianity; that is because they are so mystical.

All men are somewhat ridiculous and grotesque, just because they are men; and in this respect artists might well be regarded as man multiplied by two. So it is, was, and shall be.

Think of something finite molded into the infinite, and you think of man.

From what the moderns want, we must learn what poetry should become; from what the ancients did, what poetry must be.

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.

One mentions many artists who are actually art works of nature.

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.