My dear young friend! You are probably more intimate with Feuerbach now. You ought really first to have read his paper on Death and Immortality. However, you will soon find the right thing. It is a bad business that one has to read books in order to become a natural man. But much of the evil of this is in the books themselves. A writer must write God knows how much to express the simplest truth and in so doing often becomes a writer instead of a man. But Feuerbach emerges as a man when all is said and done, and that is why he is so important, particularly in relation to absolute philosophy which tends to dissolve the man in the philosopher. I have never seen the natural healthy process work itself out so clearly and consciously as in Feuerbach and I confess I am greatly indebted to him.
Richard Wagner
Source: Letters of Richard Wagner, Volume 1, ed. Altmann/Hull (London: Dent, 1927), No. 162