The beautiful is the absolute (the infinite in the finite) in sensuous existence, the Idea in limited manifestation.

If this chimerical infinite were real, I own all possible and conceivable combinations of atoms would be found in it; and that consequently all combinations that seem to require the utmost industry would likewise be included in them.

A firm belief in a sphere of life freed from the category of time, together with the conviction that the poetic images of that superior world current among mankind are images and nothing else, is likely to give rise to definitions of the Absolute by purely negative attributes and to mental efforts having for their object the absorption of individual existence in the indescribable infinite.

Therefore man is able only imperfectly to know an incorporeal substance; how much less can he know the uncreated infinite being of God?

You have almost obliged me to explain to you how great my own worth really is; how much more just and safe it would have been, if now and then you had not passed judgment but had believed; if you had presupposed in me an unknown infinite.