The Case of Wagner, Nietzsche Contra Wagner, and Selected Aphorisms. · Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche
10.
And now just a word _en passant_ concerning Wagner’s writings: they are among other things a school of _shrewdness_. The system of procedures of which Wagner disposes, might be applied to a hundred other cases,—he that hath ears to hear let him hear. Perhaps I may lay claim to some public acknowledgment, if I put three of the most valuable of these procedures into a precise form. Everything that Wagner _cannot_ do is bad. Wagner could do much more than he does; but his strong principles prevent him. Everything that Wagner _can_ do, no one will ever be able to do after him, no one has ever done before him, and no one must ever do after him. Wagner is godly. These three propositions are the quintessence of Wagner’s writings;—the rest is merely—“literature”.
Text from Project Gutenberg, public domain in the United States.