The history of the world is none other than the progress of the, consciousness of freedom.
Poetry is the universal art of the spirit which has become free in itself and which is not tied down for its realization to external sensuous material; instead, it launches out exclusively in the inner space and the inner time of ideas and feelings.
The true is the whole.
In the Soul is the awaking of Consciousness: Consciousness sets itself up as Reason, awaking at one bound to the sense of its rationality: and this Reason by its activity emancipates itself to objectivity and the consciousness of its intelligent unity.
The man whom philosophy leaves cold, and the man whom real faith does not illuminate, may be assured that the fault lies in them, not in knowledge and faith. The former is still an alien to philosophy, the latter an alien to faith.
The beginning of religion, more precisely its content, is the concept of religion itself, that God is the absolute truth, the truth of all things, and subjectively that religion alone is the absolutely true knoweldge.
God is, as it were, the sewer into which all contradictions flow.
In a true tragedy, both parties must be right.
The sublime in art is the attempt to express the infinite without finding in the realm of phenomena any object which proves itself fitting for this representation.
The force of mind is only as great as its expression; its depth only as deep as its power to expand and lose itself.
Philosophy must indeed recognize the possibility that the people rise to it, but must not lower itself to the people.
Reading the morning newspaper is the realist’s morning prayer.
To make abstractions hold in reality is to destroy reality.
Amid the pressure of great events, a general principle gives no help.
If we go on to cast a look at the fate of world historical personalities... we shall find it to have been no happy one. They attained no calm enjoyment; their whole life was labor and trouble; their whole nature was nothing but their master passion. When their object is attained they fall off like empty hulls from the kernel. They die early, like Alexander; they are murdered, like Casear; transported to St. Helena, like Napoleon.
Art does not simply reveal God: it is one of the ways in which God reveals, and thus actualizes, himself.
By Nature man is not what he ought to be; only through a transforming process does he arrive at truth.
The one who merely flees is not yet free. In fleeing he is still conditioned by that from which he flees.
Uneducated people delight in argument and fault-finding, for it is easy to find fault, but difficult to recognize the good and its inner necessity.
It is hard to see why we should not turn round and mistrust this very mistrust. Should we not be concerned as to whether this fear of error is not just the error itself?