"In what time does man live? The thinkers have always known that he does not live in any time at all. The immortality of thoughts and deeds banishes him to a timeless realm at whose heart an inscrutable death lies in wait. ... Devoured by the countless demands of the moment, time slipped away from him; the medium in which the pure melody of his youth would swell was destroyed. The fulfilled tranquility in which his late maturity would ripen was stolen from him. It was purloined by everyday reality, which, with its events, chance occurrences, and obligations, disrupted the myriad opportunities of youthful time, immortal time. ... From day to day, second to second, the self preserves itself, clinging to that instrument: time, the instrument that it was supposed to play."

“Für die Romantiker und für die spekulative Philosophie bedeutete der Terminus kritisch: objektiv produktiv, schöpferisch aus Besonnenheit. Kritisch sein hieß die Erhebung des Denkens über alle Bindungen so weit treiben, daß gleichsam zauberisch aus der Einsicht in das Falsche der Bindungen die Erkenntnis der Wahrheit sich schwang.”

“Everyone who achieves strives for totality, and the value of his achievement lies in that totality—that is, in the fact that the whole, undivided nature of a human being should be expressed in his achievement. But when determined by our society, as we see it today, achievement does not express a totality; it is completely fragmented and derivative. It is not uncommon for the community to be the site where a joint and covert struggle is waged against higher ambitions and more personal goals. ... The socially relevant achievement of the average person serves in the vast majority of cases to repress the original and nonderivative, inner aspirations of the human being.”

“The true sign of decadence is not the collusion of the university and the state (something that is by no means incompatible with honest barbarity), but the theory and guarantee of academic freedom, when in reality people assume with brutal simplicity that the aim of study is to steer its disciples to a socially conceived individuality.”

“Der Beruf folgt so wenig aus der Wissenschaft, dass sie ihn sogar ausschließen kann. Denn die Wissenschaft duldet ihrem Wesen nach keine Lösung von sich.”

“An das Leben der Studenten tritt die Frage nach seiner bewußten Einheit heran. ... Das Auszeichnende im Studentenleben ist in der Tat der Gegenwille, sich einem Prinzip zu unterwerfen, mit der Idee sich zu durchdringen. Der Name der Wissenschaft dient vorzüglich, eine tiefeingesessene, verbürgerte Indifferenz zu verbergen.”

“… für den wahren Sammler ist die Erwerbung eines alten Buches dessen Wiedergeburt. … Die alte Welt erneuern – das ist der tiefste Trieb im Wunsch des Sammlers, Neues zu erwerben, und darum steht der Sammler älterer Bücher dem Quell des Sammelns näher als der Interessent für bibliophile Neudrucke.translation:… for the true collector, acquiring an old book is its rebirth. … Renewing the old world — this is the deepest drive in the collector's desire to acquire new things, and that is why the collector of older books is closer to the source of collecting than the person interested in bibliophile reprints.”