A genuine work of art usually displeases at first sight, as it suggests a deficiency in the spectator.
Art will always be art.
True works of art are a manifestation of the higher laws of nature.
Every beginning is cheerful.
Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back, always ineffectiveness. Concerning all acts of initiation – creation – there is one elementary truth, the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans...
To act is easy, to think is hard; to act according to our thought is troublesome.
I hate everything that merely instructs me without augmenting or directly invigorating my activity.
The threshold is the place of expectation.
Experience is only half of experience.
Those who have no hope for a future life are already dead for the present one.
Life is but a preparation for what there is to come.
Modern poets add a lot of water to their ink.
One is never satisfied with the portrait of a person that one knows.
What you have inherited from your forefathers, it takes work to make it your own.
If I work incessantly to the last, nature owes me another form of existence when the present one collapses.
Without haste! without rest! Bind the motto to thy breast! Bear it with thee as a spell; Storm or sunshine, guard it well.
I always had an aversion to your apostles of freedom; each but sought for himself freedom to do what he liked.
When Nature begins to reveal her open secret to a man, he feels an irresistible longing for her worthiest interpreter, Art.
Beauty can never really understand itself.
Character calls forth character.