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?

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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.