The life and vigor of poetry consists of the fact that it steps out of itself, tears out a section of religion, then withdraws into itself to assimilate it. The same is true of philosophy.

Women do not have as great a need for poetry because their own essence is poetry.

The poetry of this one is called philosophical, of that one philological, of a third rhetorical, and so on. Which is then the poetic poetry?

The subject of history is the gradual realization of all that is practically necessary.

Every uneducated person is a caricature of himself.

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.

Whoever has not arrived at the clear insight that there might be greatness entirely outside his own sphere for which he has no understanding, whoever does not have at least a dim inkling in which area of the human spirit this greatness might be situated: he is within his own sphere either without genius, or he has not educated himself up to the point of the classical attitude.