Yet even Coleridge admits that there is a certain “nimiety” about the Germans. By this imperfect observance of the law of measure the Germans betray the fact that they are a people still young in civilization
Wilamowitz idolized his own scholarship, not Plato, not Sophocles, not Homer
[Wolf] mehr ein Mensch von grosser Wirksamkeit als ein grosser Mensch
At first glance a list of writings usually informs us of our ignorance, and yet one hallmark of a learned person is that this information can be endured through a certain confidence
it is only by criticism that one may determine whether the enthusiast is a man who is moving towards wisdom or is a candidate for Bedlam
Everybody can make distinctions: it is the lexicographer’s business to make broad definitions which embrace them; the synthetic power is far above the analytic
They do not know their own literature as Frenchmen and Englishmen know theirs.… The consequent crudity and amateurishness of their criticism of life and letters is their misfortune and not their fault
a book that furnishes no quotations, is, me judice, no book – it is a plaything
Diderot had a truly Gargantuan hunger for knowledge, a hunger that in the eyes of the humanist degenerates into a mere lust (libido sciendi), because of its lack of measure and restraint
L’ère des scholiastes et commentateurs se rouvre et recommence