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

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

About no subject is there less philosophizing than about philosophy.

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

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

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

Aphorisms are the true form of the universal philosophy.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

Ideas are infinite, original, and lively divine thoughts.

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.

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.

In true prose everything must be underlined.

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

It is peculiar to mankind to transcend mankind.

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