Art and works of art do not make an artist; sense and enthusiasm and instinct do.

All thinking of the religious man is etymological, a reduction of all concepts to the original intuition, to the characteristic.

An aphorism ought to be entirely isolated from the surrounding world like a little work of art and complete in itself like a hedgehog.

Novels are the Socratic dialogues of our time. Practical wisdom fled from school wisdom into this liberal form.

The naive is what is or appears to be natural, individual, or classical to the point of irony or to the point of continuous alternation of self-creation and self-destruction. If it is only instinct, then it is childlike, childish, or silly; if it is only intention, it becomes affectation.

The German national character is a favorite subject of character experts, probably because the less mature a nation, the more she is an object of criticism and not of history.

Witty inspirations are the proverbs of the educated.