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104 quotes
Biography
"The artist belongs to his work, not the work to the artist."
"Poetry heals the wounds inflicted by reason."
"Philosophy is really nostalgia, the desire to be at home."
"Unser Leben ist kein Traum, aber es soll und wird vielleicht einer werden."
"Es giebt eine Reihe idealischer Begebenheiten, die der Wirklichkeit parallel läuft. Selten fallen sie zusammen. Menschen und Zufälle modificiren gewöhnlich die idealische Begebenheit, so dass sie unvollkommen erscheint, und ihre Folgen gleiche falls unvollkommen sind. So bei der Reformation; stat des Protestantismus kam das Lutherthum hervor."
"Schicksal und Gemüt sind Namen eines Begriffs."
"Morality must be the heart of our existence, if it is to be what it wants to be for us. ... The highest form of philosophy is ethics. Thus all philosophy begins with “I am.” The highest statement of cognition must be an expression of that fact which is the means and ground for all cognition, namely, the goal of the I."
"Only the most perfect human being can design the most perfect philosophy."
"Every stage of education begins with childhood. That is why the most educated person on earth so much resembles a child."
"Philosophy ... bears witness to the deepest love of reflection, to absolute delight in wisdom."
"The poem of the understanding is philosophy."
"Die Möglichkeit aller Philosophie ... dass sich die Intelligenz durch Selbstberührung eine Selbstgesezmäßige Bewegung - d.i. eine eigne Form der Tätigkeit gibt."
"Friends, the soil is poor, we must sow seeds in plenty for us to garner even modest harvests."
"Everywhere we seek the Absolute, and always we find only things."
"Denotation by means of sounds and markings is a remarkable abstraction. Three letters designate God for me; several lines a million things. How easy becomes the manipulation of the universe here, how evident the concentration of the intellectual world! Language is the dynamics of the spiritual realm. One word of command moves armies; the word Liberty entire nations."
"Imagination places the future world for us either above or below or in reincarnation. We dream of travels throughout the universe: is not the universe within us? We do not know the depths of our spirit. The mysterious path leads within. In us, or nowhere, lies eternity with its worlds, the past and the future."
"Self-alienation is the source of all degradation as well as, on the contrary, the basis of all true elevation. The first step will be a look inward, an isolating contemplation of our self. Whoever remains standing here proceeds only halfway. The second step must be an active look outward, an autonomous, determined observation of the outer world."
"We are on a mission: we are called to the cultivation of the earth."
"Every beloved object is the center point of a paradise."
"The best thing about the sciences is their philosophical ingredient, like life for an organic body. If one dephilosophizes the sciences, what remains left? Earth, air, and water."
"Poets and priests were one in the beginning, and they only separated in later times. But the real poet is always a priest, just as the real priest always remains a poet."
"Nothing is more indispensable to true religiosity than a mediator that links us with divinity."
"Tools arm the man. One can well say that man is capable of bringing forth a world; he lacks only the necessary apparatus, the corresponding armature of his sensory tools. The beginning is there. Thus the principle of a warship lies in the idea of the shipbuilder, who is able to incorporate this thought by making himself into a gigantic machine, as it were, through a mass of men and appropriate tools and materials. Thus the idea of a moment often required monstrous organs, monstrous masses of materials, and man is therefore a potential, if not an actual creator."
"Building worlds is not enough for the deeper urging mind; but a loving heart sates the striving spirit."
"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."