Novels are the Socratic dialogues of our time. Practical wisdom fled from school wisdom into this liberal form.
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.
What is called good society is usually nothing but a mosaic of polished caricatures.
Strictly speaking, the idea of a scientific poem is probably as nonsensical as that of a poetic science.
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.
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.
Set religion free, and a new humanity will begin.
Religion is absolutely unfathomable. Always and everywhere one can dig more deeply into infinities.
Religion must completely encircle the spirit of ethical man like his element, and this luminous chaos of divine thoughts and feelings is called enthusiasm.
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?
Where there is politics or economics, there is no morality.
Nothing truly convincing - which would possess thoroughness, vigor, and skill - has been written against the ancients as yet especially not against their poetry.
He who has religion will speak poetry. But philosophy is the tool with which to seek and discover religion.
From what the moderns want, we must learn what poetry should become from what the ancients did, what poetry must be.
One has only as much morality as one has philosophy and poetry.
Women are treated as unjustly in poetry as in life. The feminine ones are not idealistic, and the idealistic not feminine.
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?
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.
Women do not have as great a need for poetry because their own essence is poetry.
God is each truly and exalted thing, therefore the individual himself to the highest degree. But are not nature and the world individuals?