"Mysteries are feminine; they like to veil themselves but still want to be seen and divined."

"Virtue is reason which has become energy."

"When reason and unreason come into contact, an electrical shock occurs. This is called polemics."

"Every complete man has his genius. True virtue is genius."

"A family can develop only with a loving woman as its center."

"Every good man progressively becomes God. To become God, to be man, and to educate oneself, are expressions that are synonymous."

"It is as deadly for a mind to have a system as to have none. Therefore it will have to decide to combine both."

"It is peculiar to mankind to transcend mankind."

"Versatility of education can be found in our best poetry, but the depth of mankind should be found in the philosopher."

"Religion can emerge in all forms of feeling: here wild anger, there the sweetest pain; here consuming hatred, there the childlike smile of serene humility."

"If you want to see mankind fully, look at a family. Within the family minds become organically one, and for this reason the family is total poetry."

"Religion must completely encircle the spirit of ethical man like his element, and this luminous chaos of divine thoughts and feelings is called enthusiasm."

"About no subject is there less philosophizing than about philosophy."

"How many authors are there among writers? Author means originator."

"Mathematics is, as it were, a sensuous logic, and relates to philosophy as do the arts, music, and plastic art to poetry."

"Novels are the Socratic dialogues of our time. Practical wisdom fled from school wisdom into this liberal form."

"All the classical genres are now ridiculous in their rigorous purity."

"Eternal life and the invisible world are only to be sought in God. Only within Him do all spirits dwell. He is an abyss of individuality, the only infinite plenitude."

"There are writers in Germany who drink the Absolute like water; and there are books in which even the dogs make references to the Infinite."

"Where there is politics or economics, there is no morality."

"A so-called happy marriage corresponds to love as a correct poem to an improvised song."

"Morality without a sense of paradox is mean."

"No idea is isolated, but is only what it is among all ideas."

"Duty is for Kant the One and All. Out of the duty of gratitude, he claims, one has to defend and esteem the ancients; and only out of duty has he become a great man."

"He who has religion will speak poetry. But philosophy is the tool with which to seek and discover religion."

"The poetry of this one is called philosophical, of that one philological, of a third rhetorical, and so on. Which is then the poetic poetry?"

"The essential point of view of Christianity is sin."

"As the ancient commander addressed his soldiers before battle, so should the moralist speak to men in the struggle of the era."

"Wit as an instrument of revenge is as infamous as art is as a means of sensual titillation."

"Reason is mechanical, wit chemical, and genius organic spirit."

"What is called good society is usually nothing but a mosaic of polished caricatures."

"Women are treated as unjustly in poetry as in life. The feminine ones are not idealistic, and the idealistic not feminine."

"In the world of language, or in other words in the world of art and liberal education, religion necessarily appears as mythology or as Bible."

"Wit is an explosion of the compound spirit."

"Religion is absolutely unfathomable. Always and everywhere one can dig more deeply into infinities."

"Combine the extremes, and you will have the true center."

"Whoever does not philosophize for the sake of philosophy, but rather uses philosophy as a means, is a sophist."

"Plato's philosophy is a dignified preface to future religion."

"In true prose everything must be underlined."

"Nothing is more witty and grotesque than ancient mythology and Christianity; that is because they are so mystical."

"One has only as much morality as one has philosophy and poetry."

"Nothing truly convincing - which would possess thoroughness, vigor, and skill - has been written against the ancients as yet; especially not against their poetry."

"Witty inspirations are the proverbs of the educated."

"Set religion free, and a new humanity will begin."

"A definition of poetry can only determine what poetry should be and not what poetry actually was and is; otherwise the most concise formula would be: Poetry is that which at some time and some place was thus named."

"Like Leibniz's possible worlds, most men are only equally entitled pretenders to existence. There are few existences."

"He who does not become familiar with nature through love will never know her."

"The difference between religion and morality lies simply in the classical division of things into the divine and the human, if one only interprets this correctly."

"Kant introduced the concept of the negative into philosophy. Would it not also be worthwhile to try to introduce the concept of the positive into philosophy?"

"Aphorisms are the true form of the universal philosophy."