The German national character is a favorite subject of character experts, probably because the less mature a nation, the more she is an object of criticism and not of history.

• There is no self-knowledge but an historical one. No one knows what he himself is who does not know his fellow men, especially the most prominent one of the community, the master's master, the genius of the age.
• 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.
• Art and works of art do not make an artist sense and enthusiasm and instinct do.
• Wit as an instrument of revenge is as infamous as art is as a means of sensual titillation.
• 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.
• An aphorism ought to be entirely isolated from the surrounding world like a little work of art and complete in itself like a hedgehog.
• Mathematics is, as it were, a sensuous logic, and relates to philosophy as do the arts, music, and plastic art to poetry.
• Form your life humanly, and you have done enough: but you will never reach the height of art and the depth of science without something divine.
• Beauty is that which is simultaneously attractive and sublime.
• Versatility of education can be found in our best poetry, but the depth of mankind should be found in the philosopher.