The whole history of modern poetry is a continuous commentary on the short text of philosophy: every art should become science, and every science should become art; poetry and philosophy should be united.

One has only as much morality as one has philosophy and poetry.

Considered subjectively, philosophy always begins in the middle, like an epic poem.

Many works of the ancients have become fragments. Many works of the moderns are fragments at the time of their origin.

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.

Aphorisms are the true form of the universal philosophy.

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.