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

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

Nothing truly convincing - which would possess thoroughness, vigor, and skill - has been written against the ancients as yet; especially not against their poetry.

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

Where there is politics or economics, there is no morality.

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

Wit is an explosion of the compound spirit.

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.

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

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.

Beauty is that which is simultaneously attractive and sublime.

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.

Beauty is that which is simultaneously attractive and sublime.

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