There is an energy which springs from sickness and debility: it has a more powerful effect than the real, but, sadly, expires in an even greater infirmity.
Before abstraction everything is one, but one like chaos; after abstraction everything is united again, but this union is a free binding of autonomous, self-determined beings. Out of a mob a society has developed, chaos has been transformed into a manifold world.
What delights, what pleasures does your life offer you that outweigh the raptures of death?
Genius in general is poetic. Where genius has been active it has been poetically active. The truly moral person is a poet.
In a work of art, chaos must shimmer through the veil of order.
To get to know a truth properly, one must polemicize it.
I was still blind, but twinkling stars did dance Throughout my being’s limitless expanse, Nothing had yet drawn close, only at distant stages I found myself, a mere suggestion sensed in past and future ages.
Fate and temperament are the names of a concept.
One should, when overwhelmed by the shadow of a giant, move aside and see if the colossal shadow isn’t merely that of a pygmy blocking out the sun.
The highest purpose of intellectual cultivation is to give a man a perfect knowledge and mastery of his own inner self.
The history of every individual man should be a Bible.
It is certain my belief gains quite infinitely the very moment I can convince another mind thereof.
How do we see physically? No differently that we do in our consciousness – by means of the productive power of imagination. Consciousness is the eye and ear, the sense for inner and outer meaning.
Mathematics is the Life of the Gods.
We are on a mission: we are called to the cultivation of the earth .
We touch heaven when we lay our hand on a human body!
Prayer is to religion what thinking is to philosophy. To pray is to make religion.
A certain degree of solitude seems necessary to the full growth and spread of the highest mind; and therefore must a very extensive intercourse with men stifle many a holy germ, and scare away the gods, who shun the restless tumult of noisy companies and the discussion of petty interests.
Building worlds is not enough for the deeper urging mind; but a loving heart sates the striving spirit.
Play is experimenting with chance.