Great Throughts Treasury

"While the poets were above all interested in the fluid and fugitive aspects of Nature, others desired, by slogging away with a hatchet and pickax, to discover the interior structure of Nature and the relationship between the separate morsels. The spirit of our friend Nature dissolved in their hands, leaving nothing but throbbing or dead parts."

"Whoever sees life other than as a self-destroying illusion is himself still preoccupied with life. Life must not be a novel that is given to us, but one that is made by us."

"Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship may be called throughout prosaic and modern. The Romantic sinks to ruin, the Poesy of Nature, the Wonderful. The Book treats merely of common worldly things: Nature and Mysticism are altogether forgotten. It is a poetised civic and household History; the Marvellous is expressly treated therein as imagination and enthusiasm. Artistic Atheism is the spirit of the Book. ... It is properly a Candide, directed against Poetry: the Book is highly unpoetical in respect of spirit, poetical as the dress and body of it are."

"Without dreams we would certainly earlier age."

"Yet weep thy loved ones tears of joy, tears of feeling and endless thanksgiving over your grave -- joyously startled, they see thee rise again, and themselves with thee -- behold thee weep with sweet fervor on the blessed bosom of thy mother, solemnly walking with thy friends, uttering words plucked as from the Tree of Life; see thee hasten, full of longing, into thy father's arms, bearing with thee youthful humanity, and the inexhaustible cup of the golden future. Soon the mother hastened after thee -- in heavenly triumph -- she was the first with thee in the new home. Since then, long ages have flowed past, and in ever-increasing splendor have stirred your new creation -- and thousands have, away from pangs and tortures, followed thee, filled with faith and longing and fidelity -- walking about with thee and the heavenly virgin in the kingdom of love, serving in the temple of heavenly Death, and forever thine."