How can you say that love is blind? Keener than a young eagle's is its sight.
Transcendence: that which transcends experience.
In order to succeed in a profession, a person not only needs to have its good, but also its bad qualities. The former are the spirit, the latter is the body of the job.
If someone took the finest marble and knew how to shape it artfully: Prometheus' material was lowly clay, but his statues walked.
Who could deny that our Austria is richer than any other country? As the saying goes: "We have money like manure.
You say I'm small? I certainly can relate, although it is a matter of perspective. The distance is deceptive, my friend, you standtoo low.
The real genres: good and bad.
Man lives two lives, woe, were it otherwise! One is seized by death, the other one, his honor, remains.
I've never been on good terms with God, but now I'm becoming His intimate, for He is truly absolute and extremely legitimate.
Prose talks and poetry sings.
Many said selfishness was the flaw of our modern age; but then self-conceit emerged from a corner of the deepest hell to join selfishness.
Love wants to be confirmed with concrete symbols, but recklessness loves instability.
A heart that overflows may seek out merrymaking and boisterous festivities to quietly rejoice, unnoticed amidst the reveling crowds.
Drive the women from the bed just as you drove them from the choir; a eunuch sings in Rome, and the priests masturbate.
A wise man can and should stand above his times, not so the poet, but he should be their apex.
Science and art, or by the same token, poetry and prose differ from one another like a journey and an excursion. The purpose of the journey is its goal, the purpose of an excursion is the process.
Human life, old and young, takes place between hope and remembrance. The young man sees all the gates to his desires open, and the old man remembers--his hopes.
Why I love the ancients so much? Aside from everything else, when I read them, the entire past between them and me unfolds at thesame time. The hearts of how many heroes and poets may have been set on fire by Plutarch's biographies which now inspire me with their own and with borrowed flames!
Recently, the Germans have developed a tendency to prefer the so-called first (youthful) style of great artists to their mature works. Could it be that they do not realize that their aesthetic criteria, generally speaking, are juvenile?
Caution is the daughter of circumspection, but she tends to outgrow her mother.
A pious woman's neighbor, a philanthropist's child, a liberal's servant--these three have a hard life.
Jealousy is a grievous passion that jealously seeks what causes grief.
The spirit of poetry combines the profundity of the philosopher and the child's delight in bright pictures.
Love! Hate! Is there no third?
Without a notion of the transcendental, human beings would, indeed, be animals; however, only fools can be convinced of it, and only degenerates need such a conviction.
