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A so-called happy marriage corresponds to love as a correct poem to an improvised song.
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What men are among the other formations of the earth, artists are among men.
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Eternal life and the invisible world are only to be sought in God. Only within Him do all spirits dwell. He is an abyss of individuality, the only infinite plenitude.
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Irony is a clear consciousness of an eternal agility, of the infinitely abundant chaos.
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Mathematics is, as it were, a sensuous logic, and relates to philosophy as do the arts, music, and plastic art to poetry.
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The historian is a prophet looking backward.
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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.
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Plato's philosophy is a dignified preface to future religion.
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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.
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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.
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Wit is an explosion of the compound spirit.
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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.
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Considered subjectively, philosophy always begins in the middle, like an epic poem.
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The surest method of being incomprehensible or, moreover, to be misunderstood is to use words in their original sense; especially words from the ancient languages.
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It is peculiar to mankind to transcend mankind.
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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.
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When reason and unreason come into contact, an electrical shock occurs. This is called polemics.
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In true prose everything must be underlined.
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What is called good society is usually nothing but a mosaic of polished caricatures.
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Witty inspirations are the proverbs of the educated.
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Every uneducated person is a caricature of himself.
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About no subject is there less philosophizing than about philosophy.
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Every complete man has his genius. True virtue is genius.
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As the ancient commander addressed his soldiers before battle, so should the moralist speak to men in the struggle of the era.