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

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

Form your life humanly, and you have done enough: but you will never reach the height of art and the depth of science without something divine.

All men are somewhat ridiculous and grotesque, just because they are men; and in this respect artists might well be regarded as man multiplied by two. So it is, was, and shall be.

A definition of poetry can only determine what poetry should be and not what poetry actually was and is; otherwise the most concise formula would be: Poetry is that which at some time and some place was thus named.

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

Religion must completely encircle the spirit of ethical man like his element, and this luminous chaos of divine thoughts and feelings is called enthusiasm.

A critic is a reader who ruminates. Thus, he should have more than one stomach.

How many authors are there among writers? Author means originator.

Religion can emerge in all forms of feeling: here wild anger, there the sweetest pain; here consuming hatred, there the childlike smile of serene humility.

In the world of language, or in other words in the world of art and liberal education, religion necessarily appears as mythology or as Bible.

It is peculiar to mankind to transcend mankind.

A priest is he who lives solely in the realm of the invisible, for whom all that is visible has only the truth of an allegory.

The genuine priest always feels something higher than compassion.

Where there is politics or economics, there is no morality.

Many a witty inspiration is like the surprising reunion of befriended thoughts after a long separation.

He who has religion will speak poetry. But philosophy is the tool with which to seek and discover religion.

What is called good society is usually nothing but a mosaic of polished caricatures.

Women are treated as unjustly in poetry as in life. The feminine ones are not idealistic, and the idealistic not feminine.

Publication is to thinking as childbirth is to the first kiss.

From what the moderns want, we must learn what poetry should become; from what the ancients did, what poetry must be.

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

Mathematics is, as it were, a sensuous logic, and relates to philosophy as do the arts, music, and plastic art to poetry.

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

God is each truly and exalted thing, therefore the individual himself to the highest degree. But are not nature and the world individuals?

The subject of history is the gradual realization of all that is practically necessary.

Reason is mechanical, wit chemical, and genius organic spirit.

Women do not have as great a need for poetry because their own essence is poetry.

Every uneducated person is a caricature of himself.

Eternal life and the invisible world are only to be sought in God. Only within Him do all spirits dwell. He is an abyss of individuality, the only infinite plenitude.

All the classical genres are now ridiculous in their rigorous purity.

No idea is isolated, but is only what it is among all ideas.

Wit is the appearance, the external flash of imagination. Thus its divinity, and the witty character of mysticism.

Witty inspirations are the proverbs of the educated.

The poetry of this one is called philosophical, of that one philological, of a third rhetorical, and so on. Which is then the poetic poetry?

Religion is absolutely unfathomable. Always and everywhere one can dig more deeply into infinities.

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

If you want to see mankind fully, look at a family. Within the family minds become organically one, and for this reason the family is total poetry.

There is no self-knowledge but an historical one. No one knows what he himself is who does not know his fellow men, especially the most prominent one of the community, the master’s master, the genius of the age.

One has only as much morality as one has philosophy and poetry.

Many works of the ancients have become fragments. Many works of the moderns are fragments at the time of their origin.

Morality without a sense of paradox is mean.

As the ancient commander addressed his soldiers before battle, so should the moralist speak to men in the struggle of the era.

Wit is an explosion of the compound spirit.

One can only become a philosopher, but not be one. As one believes he is a philosopher, he stops being one.

Nothing is more witty and grotesque than ancient mythology and Christianity; that is because they are so mystical.

Strictly speaking, the idea of a scientific poem is probably as nonsensical as that of a poetic science.

Beauty is that which is simultaneously attractive and sublime.

Think of something finite molded into the infinite, and you think of man.

The main thing is to know something and to say it.

Kant introduced the concept of the negative into philosophy. Would it not also be worthwhile to try to introduce the concept of the positive into philosophy?

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

Irony is a clear consciousness of an eternal agility, of the infinitely abundant chaos.

The essential point of view of Christianity is sin.

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

Versatility of education can be found in our best poetry, but the depth of mankind should be found in the philosopher.

Every complete man has his genius. True virtue is genius.

What is lost in the good or excellent translation is precisely the best.

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

About no subject is there less philosophizing than about philosophy.

Considered subjectively, philosophy always begins in the middle, like an epic poem.

Man is a creative retrospection of nature upon itself.

Religion is not only a part of education, an element of humanity, but the center of everything else, always the first and the ultimate, the absolutely original.

The historian is a prophet looking backward.

Aphorisms are the true form of the universal philosophy.

A classical work doesn’t ever have to be understood entirely. But those who are educated and who are still educating themselves must desire to learn more and more from it.

The difference between religion and morality lies simply in the classical division of things into the divine and the human, if one only interprets this correctly.

Wit as an instrument of revenge is as infamous as art is as a means of sensual titillation.

Novels tend to end as the Paternoster begins: with the kingdom of God on earth.

There are writers in Germany who drink the Absolute like water; and there are books in which even the dogs make references to the Infinite.

What men are among the other formations of the earth, artists are among men.

An artist is he for whom the goal and center of life is to form his mind.

Set religion free, and a new humanity will begin.

A so-called happy marriage corresponds to love as a correct poem to an improvised song.

Whoever does not philosophize for the sake of philosophy, but rather uses philosophy as a means, is a sophist.

Ideas are infinite, original, and lively divine thoughts.

In true prose everything must be underlined.

Duty is for Kant the One and All. Out of the duty of gratitude, he claims, one has to defend and esteem the ancients; and only out of duty has he become a great man.

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.

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

The surest method of being incomprehensible or, moreover, to be misunderstood is to use words in their original sense; especially words from the ancient languages.

Mysteries are feminine; they like to veil themselves but still want to be seen and divined.

He who does not become familiar with nature through love will never know her.

Nothing truly convincing – which would possess thoroughness, vigor, and skill – has been written against the ancients as yet; especially not against their poetry.

A family can develop only with a loving woman as its center.

Man is free whenever he produces or manifests God, and through this he becomes immortal.

Combine the extremes, and you will have the true center.

Virtue is reason which has become energy.

When reason and unreason come into contact, an electrical shock occurs. This is called polemics.