She is exactly that which she should be; she expresses goodness, order,
law, truth, honour; she transcends time and reveals the eternal.


_Memories of the Golden Age_


In the world of society one must seem to live on ambrosia and to know
none but noble thoughts. Anxiety, want, passion, simply do not exist.
All realism is suppressed as brutal. It is a world which amuses itself
with the flattering illusion that it lives above the clouds and breathes
mythological air. That is why all vehemence, the cry of Nature, all
suffering, thoughtless familiarity, and every frank sign of love shock
this delicate medium like a bombshell; they shatter this collective
fabric, this palace of clouds, this enchanted architecture, just as
shrill cockcrow scatters the fairies into hiding. These fine receptions
are unconsciously a work of art, a kind of poetry, by which cultivated
society reconstructs an idyll that is age-long dead. They are confused
memories of the golden age, or aspirations after a harmony which mundane
reality has not in it to give.


_Goethe Under the Lash_


I cannot like Goethe: he has little soul. His understanding of love,
religion, duty, patriotism, is paltry and even shocking. He lacks an
ardent generosity. A central dryness, an ill-cloaked egoism show through
his supple and rich talent. True, this selfishness of his at least
respects everyone's liberty and applauds all originality; but it helps