Every good man progressively becomes God. To become God, to be man, and to educate oneself, are expressions that are synonymous.

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.

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

Since philosophy now criticizes everything it comes across, a critique of philosophy would be nothing less than a just reprisal.

Plato's philosophy is a dignified preface to future religion.

An artist is he who has his center within himself. He who lacks this must choose a particular leader and mediator outside of himself, not forever, however, but only at first. For man cannot exist without a living center, and if he does not have it within himself, he may seek it only in a human being. Only a human being and his center can stimulate and awaken that of another.

Like Leibniz's possible worlds, most men are only equally entitled pretenders to existence. There are few existences.