Adam Müller

“When the world of the senses and the world of the spirit appear absolutely separated, then sin is at its peak: it has systematized and completed itself.”

“An artist who forgets the world over his work will never speak to the world through the work, may perhaps tear the work dead from himself, but will never be able to close it into its own free and necessary life.”

“A poem is a whole, complete 'made' world: a fiction is a half, incomplete, poorly made piece of world.”

“[...] the soul feels, in contemplation of the landscape, a gentle being-carried, a movement as if by an invisible spirit, through which lingering on the charming details first gains its appeal.”

“The state is [...] an alliance of past generations with the following ones, and vice versa. It is an alliance not only of contemporaries, but also of 'spatial contemporaries'; [...] The state is not merely the union of many 'living side by side', but also of many 'succeeding one another' families.”

“Man cannot be conceived outside of the state.”

“Man is endowed with a thousandfold desires and infinite longings, and thus has been sent into a world that would be rich enough to grant even more than he can demand. Every glow of the heart finds its shadow, every thirst its wave, every longing its distance, and countless hidden, well-protected refuges are prepared for the soul that strives for safety and peace.”

“I too have often dreamed of a union of that greater nation to which we belong, as a branch belongs to the trunk, expecting revolutions, heroes, and various changes in the sentiments of nations, which should come and favor the dream. The great federalism of European peoples, which will one day come, as surely as we live, will also bear German colors; for everything great, profound, and eternal in all European institutions is German – that is the certainty that has remained to me among all those hopes. Who can still separate the German element out of Europe?”