The perishableness of life...imparts value, dignity, interest to life. - Thomas Mann

This was love at first sight, love everlasting: a feeling unknown, unhoped for, unexpected — in so far as it could be a matter of conscious awareness; it took entire possession of him, and he understood, with joyous amazement, that this was for life.

Wagner's art is the most sensational self-portrayal and self-critique of German nature that it is possible to conceive.

Because passion, like crime, does not like everyday order and well-being and every slight undoing of the bourgeois system, every confusion and infestation of the world is welcome to it, because it can unconditionally expect to find its advantage in it.