Irony is the form of paradox. Paradox is what is good and great at the same time.

If the mystical lovers of the arts, who consider all criticism dissection and all dissection destruction of enjoyment, thought logically, an exclamation like "Goodness alive!" would be the best criticism of the most deserving work of art. There are critiques which say nothing but that, only they do so more extensively.

It is as deadly for a mind to have a system as to have none. Therefore it will have to decide to combine both.

The French Revolution, Fichte's Theory of Knowledge, and Goethe's Wilhelm Meister are the three greatest tendencies of the age. Whoever takes offence at this combination, and whoever does not consider a revolution important unless it is blatant and palpable, has not yet risen to the lofty and broad vantage point of the history of mankind.

When ideas become gods, consciousness of harmony becomes devotion, humility, and hope.

Man is a creative retrospection of nature upon itself.

Beauty is that which is simultaneously attractive and sublime.