“The man was such an intellectual he was of almost no use.”

“It is almost impossible to carry the torch of truth through a crowd without singeing somebody's beard.”

“Don't judge a man by his opinions, but what his opinions have made of him.”

“Man…who lives in three places – in the past, in the present, and in the future – can be unhappy if one of these three is worthless. Religion has even added a fourth – eternity.”

“Kenntnis der Mittel ohne eine eigentliche Anwendung, ja ohne Gabe und Willen, sie anzuwenden, ist, was man jetzt gemeiniglich Gelehrsamkeit nennt.”

“Whenever he composes a critical review, I have been told, he gets an enormous erection.”

“In his Comedy, Dante Alighieri names Virgil, with many tokens of respect, as his teacher, and yet as Herr Meinhard remarks, makes such ill use of him: clear proof that even in the days of Dante one praised the ancients without knowing why. This respect for poets one does not understand and yet wishes to equal is the source of the bad writing in our literature.”