A classical work doesn't ever have to be understood entirely. But those who are educated and who are still educating themselves must desire to learn more and more from it.

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.

Whoever could properly characterize Goethe's Meister would have actually expressed what is the timely trend in literature. He would be able, as far as literary criticism is concerned, to rest.

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

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.

The essential point of view of Christianity is sin.

Publication is to thinking as childbirth is to the first kiss.