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„V živote vzdelaného človeka by sa mala striedať hudba a ticho, ako spánok a bdenie.“

„Veľa je tých, čo lepšie žijú v minulosti a v budúcnosti než v prítomnosti.“

„Každý stupeň vzdelania sa začína detstvom. Preto sa ten najvzdelanejší človek tak veľmi podobá dieťaťu.“

„Tam, kde sú deti je zlatý vek.“

„Popierať, veriť a pochybovať znamená pre človeka to, čo pre kone beh.“

„Všetko milované je stredom raja.“

„Láska je nekonečný cieľ svetových dejín, amen vesmíru.“

„Opojenie zmyslov sa má k láske ako spánok k životu.“

„Dieťa je zviditeľnená láska.“

„Láska je posledná príčina svetových dejín vesmíru.“

„Bez úplného porozumenia seba samého sa nikdy nenaučíme porozumieť druhých.“

„Muž je lyrický, žena epická, manželstvo dramatické.“

„Čítanie dobrej knihy je ustavičný dialóg, pri ktorom nás kniha oslovuje a naša duša odpovedá.“

„Umelec stojí na človeku ako socha na piedestáli.“

„Všetky udalosti nášho života sú materiálom, z ktorého môžeme postaviť, čokoľvek budeme chcieť.“

„Ak sa zmením, zmení sa svet.“

„Úplne sa nebudeme chápať nikdy. Ale budeme a môžeme oveľa viac než sa chápať.“

„Srdce básnika rozumie prírode lepšie, ako hlava učenca.“

„Trpezlivosť je dvojaká - pokojné znášanie nedostatku a pokojné znášanie blahobytu. Pravá trpezlivosť je však vždy prejavom veľkej múdrosti.“

“What is Nature? An encyclopedical, systematic Index or Plan of our Spirit. Why will we content us with the mere catalogue of our Treasures? Let us contemplate them ourselves, and in all ways elaborate and use them.”

“Morality must be the heart of our existence, if it is to be what it wants to be for us. … The highest form of philosophy is ethics. Thus all philosophy begins with “I am.” The highest statement of cognition must be an expression of that fact which is the means and ground for all cognition, namely, the goal of the I.”

“Everywhere we seek the Absolute, and always we find only things.”

“The division of Philosopher and Poet is only apparent, and to the disadvantage of both. It is a sign of disease, and of a sickly constitution.”

“The true Poet is all-knowing; he is an actual world in miniature.”

“Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship may be called throughout prosaic and modern. The Romantic sinks to ruin, the Poesy of Nature, the Wonderful. The Book treats merely of common worldly things: Nature and Mysticism are altogether forgotten. It is a poetised civic and household History; the Marvellous is expressly treated therein as imagination and enthusiasm. Artistic Atheism is the spirit of the Book. … It is properly a Candide, directed against Poetry: the Book is highly unpoetical in respect of spirit, poetical as the dress and body of it are.”

“Pure mathematics is religion.”

“Someone arrived there — who lifted the veil of the goddess, at Sais. — But what did he see? He saw — wonder of wonders — himself.”

“The highest life is mathematics.”

“Self-alienation is the source of all degradation as well as, on the contrary, the basis of all true elevation. The first step will be a look inward, an isolating contemplation of our self. Whoever remains standing here proceeds only halfway. The second step must be an active look outward, an autonomous, determined observation of the outer world.”

“We are on a mission: we are called to the cultivation of the earth.”

“Man is a sun and his senses are the planets.”

“Surely this voice meant our Teacher; for it is he that can collect the indications which lie scattered on all sides. A singular light kindles in his looks, when at length the high Rune lies before us, and he watches in our eyes whether the star has yet risen upon us, which is to make the Figure visible and intelligible.”

“Every beloved object is the center point of a paradise.”

“Life is a disease of the spirit; a working incited by Passion. Rest is peculiar to the spirit.”

“Where children are, there is a golden age.”

“Man is the higher Sense of our Planet; the star which connects it with the upper world; the eye which it turns towards Heaven.”

“If our Bodily Life is a burning, our Spiritual Life is a being burnt, a Combustion (or, is precisely the inverse the case?); Death, therefore, perhaps a Change of Capacity.”

“The poem of the understanding is philosophy.”

“The rude, discursive Thinker is the Scholastic (Schoolman Logician). The true Scholastic is a mystical Subtlist; out of logical Atoms he builds his Universe; he annihilates all living Nature, to put an Artifice of Thoughts (Gedankenkunststuck, literally Conjuror's-trick of Thoughts) in its room. His aim is an infinite Automaton. Opposite to him is the rude, intuitive Poet: this is a mystical Macrologist: he hates rules and fixed form; a wild, violent life reigns instead of it in Nature; all is animate, no law; wilfulness and wonder everywhere. He is merely dynamical. Thus does the Philosophic Spirit arise at first, in altogether separate masses. In the second stage of culture these masses begin to come in contact, multifariously enough; and, as in the union of infinite Extremes, the Finite, the Limited arises, so here also arise "Eclectic Philosophers" without number; the time of misunderstanding begins. The most limited is, in this stage, the most important, the purest Philosopher of the second stage. This class occupies itself wholly with the actual, present world, in the strictest sense. The Philosophers of the first class look down with contempt on those of the second; say, they are a little of everything, and so nothing; hold their views as the results of weakness, as Inconsequentism. On the contrary, the second class, in their turn, pity the first; lay the blame on their visionary enthusiasm, which they say is absurd, even to insanity.”

“The normal present connects the past and the future through limitation. Contiguity results, crystallization by means of solidification. There also exists, however, a spiritual present that identifies past and future through dissolution, and this mixture is the element, the atmosphere of the poet.”

“If the world is a precipitation of human nature, so to speak, then the divine world is a sublimation of the same. Both occur in one act. No precipitation without sublimation. What goes lost there in agility, is won here.”

“Fate and temperament are the names of a concept.”

“True anarchy is the generative element of religion. Out of the annihilation of all existing institutions she raises her glorious head, as the new foundress of the world.”

“Most observers of the French Revolution, especially the clever and noble ones, have explained it as a life-threatening and contagious illness. They have remained standing with the symptoms and have interpreted these in manifold and contrary ways. Some have regarded it as a merely local ill. The most ingenious opponents have pressed for castration. They well noticed that this alleged illness is nothing other than the crisis of beginning puberty.”

“Philosophy … bears witness to the deepest love of reflection, to absolute delight in wisdom.”

“No explanation is required for Holy Writing. Whoso speaks truly is full of eternal life, and wonderfully related to genuine mysteries does his Writing appear to us, for it is a Concord from the Symphony of the Universe.”

“To become properly acquainted with a truth, we must first have disbelieved it, and disputed against it.”

“Nature is an Æolian Harp, a musical instrument; whose tones again are keys to higher strings in us.”