What a wonderful phenomenon it is, carefully considered, when the human eye, that jewel of organic structures, concentrates its moist brilliance on another human creature!

Is not life in itself a thing of goodness, irrespective of whether the course it takes for us can be called a 'happy' one?

Stupid — well, there are so many kinds of stupidity, and cleverness is one of the worst.

He probably was mediocre after all, though in a very honorable sense of that word.

It is most certainly a good thing that the world knows only the beautiful opus but not its origins, not the conditions of its creation; for if people knew the sources of the artist's inspiration, that knowledge would often confuse them, alarm them, and thereby destroy the effects of excellence. strange hours! strangely enervating labor! bizarrely fertile intercourse of the mind with a body!

Reduced to a miserable mass level, the level of a Hitler, German Romanticism broke out into hysterical barbarism.

The books and magazines streamed in. He could buy them all, they piled up around him and even while he read, the number of those still to be read disturbed him. … they stood in rows, weighing down his life like a possession which he did not succeed in subordinating to his personality.