Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Irony is the form of paradox. Paradox is what is good and great at the same time.
Considered subjectively, philosophy always begins in the middle, like an epic poem.
What is called good society is usually nothing but a mosaic of polished caricatures.
Laziness is the one divine fragment of a godlike existence left to man from paradise.
When ideas become gods, consciousness of harmony becomes devotion, humility, and hope.
Irony is a clear consciousness of an eternal agility, of the infinitely abundant chaos.
The subject of history is the gradual realization of all that is practically necessary.
A so-called happy marriage corresponds to love as a correct poem to an improvised song.
Man is free whenever he produces or manifests God, and through this he becomes immortal.
With respect to ingenious subconsciousness, I think, philosophers might well rival poets.
Only he who possesses a personal religion, an original view of infinity, can be an artist.
I can no longer say my love and your love; they are both alike in their perfect mutuality.
Mysteries are feminine; they like to veil themselves but still want to be seen and divined.
Wit as an instrument of revenge is as infamous as art is as a means of sensual titillation.
Poetry should describe itself, and always be simultaneously poetry and the poetry of poetry.
When reason and unreason come into contact, an electrical shock occurs. This is called polemics.
One of two things is usually lacking in the so-called Philosophy of Art: either philosophy or art.
Religion is absolutely unfathomable. Always and everywhere one can dig more deeply into infinities.
Just as the Romans were the only nation that was truly a nation, so our age is the first genuine age.
Many a witty inspiration is like the surprising reunion of befriended thoughts after a long separation.
Strictly speaking, the idea of a scientific poem is probably as nonsensical as that of a poetic science.
In every good poem everything must be both deliberate and instinctive. That is how the poem becomes ideal.
He who has religion will speak poetry. But philosophy is the tool with which to seek and discover religion.
One can only become a philosopher, but not be one. As one believes he is a philosopher, he stops being one.
Whoever does not philosophize for the sake of philosophy, but rather uses philosophy as a means, is a sophist.
One should have wit, but not wish to have it; otherwise there will be witticism, the Alexandrian style of wit.
It is as deadly for a mind to have a system as to have none. Therefore it will have to decide to combine both.
Novels are the Socratic dialogues of our time. Practical wisdom fled from school wisdom into this liberal form.
Life is writing. The sole purpose of mankind is to engrave the thoughts of divinity onto the tablets of nature.
If you want to penetrate into the heart of physics, then let yourself be initiated into the mysteries of poetry.
Wit is the appearance, the external flash of imagination. Thus its divinity, and the witty character of mysticism.
Nothing is more witty and grotesque than ancient mythology and Christianity; that is because they are so mystical.
Wit is the appearance, the external flash, of fantasy. Hence its divinity and the similarity to the wit of mysticism.
From what the moderns want, we must learn what poetry should become; from what the ancients did, what poetry must be.
Like Leibniz's possible worlds, most men are only equally entitled pretenders to existence. There are few existences.
Many works of the ancients have become fragments. Many works of the moderns are fragments at the time of their origin.
Versatility of education can be found in our best poetry, but the depth of mankind should be found in the philosopher.
Mathematics is, as it were, a sensuous logic, and relates to philosophy as do the arts, music, and plastic art to poetry.
Women are treated as unjustly in poetry as in life. The feminine ones are not idealistic, and the idealistic not feminine.
As the ancient commander addressed his soldiers before battle, so should the moralist speak to men in the struggle of the era.
A priest is he who lives solely in the realm of the invisible, for whom all that is visible has only the truth of an allegory.
Since philosophy now criticizes everything it comes across, a critique of philosophy would be nothing less than a just reprisal.
All thinking of the religious man is etymological, a reduction of all concepts to the original intuition, to the characteristic.
The few existing writings against Kantian philosophy are the most important documents in the case history of sound common sense.
Every good man progressively becomes God. To become God, to be man, and to educate oneself, are expressions that are synonymous.
All artists are self-sacrificing human beings, and to become an artist is nothing but to devote oneself to the subterranean gods.
There is no self-knowledge except historical self-knowledge. No one knows what he is if he doesn't know what his contemporaries are.
An aphorism ought to be entirely isolated from the surrounding world like a little work of art and complete in itself like a hedgehog.
Just as a child is really a thing that wants to become a man, so is the poem an object of nature that wants to become an object ofart.
In the ancients, one sees the accomplished letter of entire poetry: in the moderns, one has the presentiment of the spirit in becoming.