The German national character is a favorite subject of character experts, probably because the less mature a nation, the more she is an object of criticism and not of history.

Set religion free, and a new humanity will begin.

One can only become a philosopher, but not be one. As one believes he is a philosopher, he stops being one.

Aphorisms are the true form of the universal philosophy.

Think of something finite molded into the infinite, and you think of man.

A so-called happy marriage corresponds to love as a correct poem to an improvised song.

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?

Man is a creative retrospection of nature upon itself.

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

Man is free whenever he produces or manifests God, and through this he becomes immortal.

There are writers in Germany who drink the Absolute like water; and there are books in which even the dogs make references to the Infinite.

Ideas are infinite, original, and lively divine thoughts.

He who has religion will speak poetry. But philosophy is the tool with which to seek and discover religion.

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

Novels tend to end as the Paternoster begins: with the kingdom of God on earth.

No idea is isolated, but is only what it is among all ideas.

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

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

Nothing is more witty and grotesque than ancient mythology and Christianity; that is because they are so mystical.

Many a witty inspiration is like the surprising reunion of befriended thoughts after a long separation.

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

What is lost in the good or excellent translation is precisely the best.

When reason and unreason come into contact, an electrical shock occurs. This is called polemics.

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

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.

It is peculiar to mankind to transcend mankind.

In true prose everything must be underlined.

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

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.

Mathematics is, as it were, a sensuous logic, and relates to philosophy as do the arts, music, and plastic art to poetry.

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

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.

Art and works of art do not make an artist; sense and enthusiasm and instinct do.

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

Whoever does not philosophize for the sake of philosophy, but rather uses philosophy as a means, is a sophist.

Novels are the Socratic dialogues of our time. Practical wisdom fled from school wisdom into this liberal form.

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.

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.

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.

The main thing is to know something and to say it.

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.

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.

Plato's philosophy is a dignified preface to future religion.

Virtue is reason which has become energy.

Religion must completely encircle the spirit of ethical man like his element, and this luminous chaos of divine thoughts and feelings is called enthusiasm.

He who does not become familiar with nature through love will never know her.

The subject of history is the gradual realization of all that is practically necessary.

Religion is absolutely unfathomable. Always and everywhere one can dig more deeply into infinities.