Many books are longer than they seem. They have indeed no end. The boredom that they cause is truly absolute and infinite.

The highest purpose of intellectual cultivation is to give a man a perfect knowledge and mastery of his own inner self.

In a work of art, chaos must shimmer through the veil of order.

Character is perfectly educated will.

Tools arm the man. One can well say that man is capable of bringing forth a world; he lacks only the necessary apparatus, the corresponding armature of his sensory tools. The beginning is there. Thus the principle of a warship lies in the idea of the shipbuilder, who is able to incorporate this thought by making himself into a gigantic machine, as it were, through a mass of men and appropriate tools and materials. Thus the idea of a moment often required monstrous organs, monstrous masses of materials, and man is therefore a potential, if not an actual creator.

Perceptibility is a kind of attentiveness.

The true Poet is all-knowing; he is an actual world in miniature.