“The Bible begins gloriously with Paradise, the symbol of youth, and ends with the everlasting kingdom, with the holy city. The history of every man should be a Bible.”

Man is lyrical, woman epic, marriage dramatic.

Christianity is the root of all democracy, the highest fact in the rights of men.

Perceptibility is a kind of attentiveness.

The history of every individual man should be a Bible.

To become properly acquainted with a truth, we must first have disbelieved it, and disputed against it.

Where children are, there is the golden age.

All power appears only in transition. Permanent power is stuff.

Life is the beginning of death. Life is for the sake of death. Death is at once the end and the beginning—at once separation and closer union of the self. Through death the reduction is complete.

I often feel, and ever more deeply I realize, that fate and character are the same conception.

Genius in general is poetic. Where genius has been active it has been poetically active. The truly moral person is a poet.

Only as far as a man is happily married to himself is he fit for married life and family life in general.

One should, when overwhelmed by the shadow of a giant, move aside and see if the colossal shadow isn’t merely that of a pygmy blocking out the sun.

Man has his being in truth–if he sacrifices truth he sacrifices himself. Whoever betrays truth betrays himself. It is not a question of lying–but of acting against one’s conviction.

Philosophy can bake no bread; but she can procure for us God, Freedom, Immortality. Which, then, is more practical, Philosophy or Economy?

Everything at a distance turns into poetry; distant mountains, distant people, distant events; all become Romantic.

Our bodies are molded rivers.

Education in its early stages always begins with fault-finding, but when it is complete, it sees the positive element in everything.

Anyone who has begun to think, places some portion of the world in jeopardy.

In all matters, before beginning, a diligent preparation should be made.

Perhaps their attacks on my character meant that the hour was ripe for my career to begin in earnest.

But what is great can only begin great.

Revolutions are the only political events which confront us directly and inevitably with the problem of beginning.

But I must at the very beginning lay down this principle – friendship can only exist between good men.

The two limits of every unit of thinking are a perplexed, troubled, or confused situation at the beginning, and a cleared up, unified, resolved situation at the close.