An artist is he for whom the goal and center of life is to form his mind.
He who does not become familiar with nature through love will never know her.
Mathematics is, as it were, a sensuous logic, and relates to philosophy as do the arts, music, and plastic art to 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.
A family can develop only with a loving woman as its center.
He who has religion will speak poetry. But philosophy is the tool with which to seek and discover religion.
A so-called happy marriage corresponds to love as a correct poem to an improvised song.
Beauty is that which is simultaneously attractive and sublime.
Wit is the appearance, the external flash of imagination. Thus its divinity, and the witty character of mysticism.
Where there is politics or economics, there is no morality.
Versatility of education can be found in our best poetry, but the depth of mankind should be found in the philosopher.
Combine the extremes, and you will have the true center.
Novels are the Socratic dialogues of our time. Practical wisdom fled from school wisdom into this liberal form.
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 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.
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.
From what the moderns want, we must learn what poetry should become; from what the ancients did, what poetry must be.
Women do not have as great a need for poetry because their own essence is poetry.
Nothing truly convincing – which would possess thoroughness, vigor, and skill – has been written against the ancients as yet; especially not against their poetry.
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.
What is called good society is usually nothing but a mosaic of polished caricatures.