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.

When the author has no idea of what to reply to a critic, he then likes to say: you could not do it better anyway. This is the same as if a dogmatic philosopher reproached a skeptic for not being able to devise a system.

Separate religion from morality, and you have the true energy for evil within man, the terrible, cruel, devastating, and inhuman principle which naturally lies in his spirit. Here the division of the indivisible punishes itself most awfully.

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

Aphorisms are the true form of the universal philosophy.

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

What is lost in the good or excellent translation is precisely the best.