f his town or monastery or age.

456

We really learn only from those books which we cannot criticise. The
author of a book which we could criticise would have to learn from us.

457

That is the reason why the Bible will never lose its power; because, as
long as the world lasts, no one can stand up and say: I grasp it as a
whole and understand all the parts of it. But we say humbly: as a whole
it is worthy of respect, and in all its parts it is applicable.

458

There is and will be much discussion as to the use and harm of
circulating the Bible. One thing is clear to me: mischief will result,
as heretofore, by using it phantastically as a system of dogma; benefit,
as heretofore, by a loving acceptance of its teachings.

459

I am convinced that the Bible will always be more beautiful the more it
is understood; the more, that is, we see and observe that every word
which we take in a general sense and apply specially to ourselves, had,
under certain circumstances of time and place, a peculiar, special, and
directly individual reference.

460

The incurable evil of religious controversy is that while one party
wants to connect the highest interest of humanity with fables and
phrases, the other tries to rest it on things that satisfy no one.

461

If one has not read the newspapers for some months and then reads them
all together, one sees, as one never saw before, how much time is wasted
with this kind of literature.

462

The classical is health; and the romantic, disease.

463

Ovid remained classical even in exile: it is not in himself that he sees
misfortune, but in his banishment from the metropolis of the world.

464

The romantic is already fallen into its own abysm. It is hard to imagine
anything more degraded than the worst of the new productions.

465

Bodies which rot while they are still alive, and are edified by the
detailed contemplation of their own decay; dead men who remain in the
world for the ruin of others, and feed their death on the living,--to
this have come our makers of literature.

When the same thing happened in antiquity, it was only as a strange
token of some rare disease; but with the moderns the disease has become
endemic and epidemic.

466

Literature decays only as men become more and more corrupt.

467

What a day it is when we must envy the men in their graves!

468

The things that are true, good, excellent, are simple and always alike,
whatever