The genius of Ovid.-- One of the most obscure expressions in poetry is that passage wherein Ovid compares the human face to the starry heavens. Yet here the poet has defined the fundamenal principle of all art: things become beautiful only through analogy to the human being, from which all the “heavens” of beauty may be enumerated.
The order of vita contemplativa.-- The aphorism of Thomasius, “virtue is not invented,” is perhaps the most inimical of all sentences to the man of contemplation. In the life of contemplation poets and artists stand quite high, yet above them there are the saints. The saint embodies some virtue while it is the poets who invent it: honor, justice, chastity- all virtues likely originate in the vision of some poet. Yet higher than the saint stands the philosopher: like the poet he invents his own virtue but further he, like the saint, embodies it in his life. Because the philosopher realizes his virtue in his own flesh it is no wonder that philosophy has never needed any saints.
Moral being.-- In love and in shame women are least understandable- for love and shame are the limits of man’s moral being.
The truth in iron necessity.-- Goethe remarked that certain Hindus in the desert made a solemn vow to never consume fish. Law itself is a marvellous and inventive consolation which man could never do without- even when it is superficial and could never possibly be broken. The foundation of human life could be found in the following principle: laws are most necessary when they are most unnecessary.
Vanity and love.-- Some of the most ancient sages believed that the world existed for the sole purpose of purifying, as by a great ritual fire, the spirit- for annihilating any imperfection in the soul. Love, suffering, death, life, philosophy, all of this no more than a vast purification right! The heart in which this vision first arose must have been tortured with the vanity of the world, but also deeply enthralled with a love for the soul and for the vita contemplativa– this was the only justice conceivable to such a heart. What contemplative spirit does not feel some attraction to this view of things? It is in us that vanity and love often must endure each other.
Happiness or beauty.-- One can dwell either in happiness or in beauty. We are either libertines or poets- or, failing this, plowmen and eternal children of the earth.
The necessity of sin.-- No one would doubt that without amusements life would quickly grow unbearably grave. An ‘amusement’ is a trifling distraction for a trifling mind- but great minds require a great distraction, and those of this later kind we call ‘sins.’