Gracefulness is a correct life: sensuality which contemplates and forms itself.

The meanest authors have at least this similarity with the great author of heaven and earth, that they usually say after a completed day of work: "And behold, what he had done was good.

Poetry and philosophy are, according to how you take them, different spheres, different forms, or factors of religion. Try to really combine both, and you will have nothing but religion.

You wanted to destroy philosophy and poetry in order to make room for religion and morality which you misunderstood: but you wereable to destroy only yourself.

We should never invoke the spirit of antiquity as our authority. Spirits are peculiar things; they cannot be grasped with the hands and be held up before others. Spirits reveal themselves only to spirits. The most direct and concise method would be, in this case as well, to prove the possession of the only redeeming faith by good works.

There is no self-knowledge except historical self-knowledge. No one knows what he is if he doesn't know what his contemporaries are.

There is so much poetry, and yet nothing is more rare than a poetic work. This is what the masses make out of poetical sketches, studies, aphorisms, trends, ruins, and raw material.