All the classical genres are now ridiculous in their rigorous purity.

Religion and morals are symmetrically opposed, just like poetry and philosophy.

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 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.

Philosophy still moves too much straight ahead, and is not yet cyclical enough.

He who does not become familiar with nature through love will never know her.

The obsession with moderation is the spirit of castrated narrow-mindedness.