Who claims that the heathen's view of the world is incorrect? Life gives you nothing! It is ruled by false gods! Nothing remains true to you but your own self; provided you remain true to it.
If someone took the finest marble and knew how to shape it artfully: Prometheus' material was lowly clay, but his statues walked.
How frightening it is to have reached the height of human accomplishment in art that must forever borrow from life's abundance.
I notice well that one stray step from the habitual path leads irresistibly into a new direction. Life moves forward, it never reverses its course.
Man lives two lives, woe, were it otherwise! One is seized by death, the other one, his honor, remains.
A pious woman's neighbor, a philanthropist's child, a liberal's servant--these three have a hard life.
The manifestation of poetry in external life is formal perfection. True sentiment grows within, and art must represent internal phenomena externally.