But when I was twelve years old I caught my first strong glimpse of one of the fundamental forces of existence, whose votary I was destined to be for life – namely, Beauty.
I became an ardent, but never a specially good, dancer.
I admired in others the strength that I lacked myself.
He who does not understand a joke, he does not understand Danish.
But I did not find any positive inspiration in my studies until I approached my nineteenth year.
Any feeling that I was enriching my mind from those surrounding me was unfortunately rare with me.
Among the delights of Summer were picnics to the woods.
Birth was something that came quite unexpectedly, and afterwards there was one child more in the house.
A love for humanity came over me, and watered and fertilised the fields of my inner world which had been lying fallow, and this love of humanity vented itself in a vast compassion.
The masses are only to be regarded as one of three things: either as copies of great personalities, bad copies, clumsily produced in a poor material, or as foils to the great, or finally as their tools.
I was at home then in the world of figures, but not in that of values.
On the whole, the world was friendly. It chiefly depended on whether one were good or not.
Six hours a day I lived under school discipline in active intercourse with people none of whom were known to those at home, and the other hours of the twenty-four I spent at home, or with relatives of the people at home, none of whom were known to anybody at school.
The Danish glee: the national version of cheerfulness.
The society of the Culture-Philistines makes life a burden to exceptional men.
We need only think of the number of talented men who sooner or later make their apologies and concessions to philistinism, so as to be permitted to exist.
The great man is not the child of his age but its step-child.
The educator shall help the young to educate themselves in opposition to the age.
Greatness has nothing to do with results or with success.
The war imbued my tin soldiers with quite a new interest. It was impossible to have boxes enough of them.
The historian is looked upon as objective when he measures the past by the popular opinions of his own time, as subjective when he does not take these opinions for models.