In true prose everything must be underlined.

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

Virtue is reason which has become energy.

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

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

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.

About no subject is there less philosophizing than about philosophy.

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

Wit is an explosion of the compound spirit.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

Witty inspirations are the proverbs of the educated.

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

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

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.

Aphorisms are the true form of the universal philosophy.

The essential point of view of Christianity is sin.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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?

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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?