Pain is short, and joy is eternal. - Friedrich Schiller

The voice of our age seems by no means favorable to art, at all events to that kind of art to which my inquiry is directed. The course of events has given a direction to the genius of the time that threatens to remove it continually further from the ideal of art. For art has to leave reality, it has to raise itself bodily above necessity and neediness; for art is the daughter of freedom, and it requires its prescriptions and rules to be furnished by the necessity of spirits and not by that of matter. But in our day it is necessity, neediness, that prevails, and bends a degraded humanity under its iron yoke. Utility is the great idol of the time, to which all powers do homage and all subjects are subservient. In this great balance of utility, the spiritual service of art has no weight, and, deprived of all encouragement, it vanishes from the noisy Vanity Fair of our time. The very spirit of philosophical inquiry itself robs the imagination of one promise after another, and the frontiers of art are narrowed, in proportion as the limits of science are enlarged.

هل أقوم بحشر جسدى داخل حشد محكم وأضغط على إرادتى فى جوهر القانون؟ إن ما كان مقدراً أن يحّلق عالياً كطيران النسر قد انتهى به الأمر إلى الزحف كالقوقع بفعل القانون. إن القانون لم تنشئ إنساناً عظيماً أبداً، بل إن الحرية هى التى تُنشئ العمالقة والأبطال.

Sense of wrongs forget to treasure— Brethren, live in perfect love!
In the starry realms above,
God will mete as we may measure.