“But, though all our knowledge begins with experience, it by no means follows that all arises out of experience.”

Heaven has given human beings three things to balance the odds of life: hope, sleep, and laughter.

Thoughts without content are empty, intuitions without concepts are blind.

The cultivation of reason leads humanity sooner to misery than happiness.

Have patience awhile; slanders are not long-lived. Truth is the child of time; erelong she shall appear to vindicate thee.

Innocence is a splendid thing, only it has the misfortune not to keep very well and to be easily misled.

One who makes himself a worm cannot complain afterwards if people step on him.

Act only according to that maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law.

The busier we are, the more acutely we feel that we live, the more conscious we are of life.

Only the descent into the hell of self-knowledge can pave the way to godliness.

Genius is the ability to independently arrive at and understand concepts that would normally have to be taught by another person.

Simply to acquiesce in skepticism can never suffice to overcome the restlessness of reason.

Out of the crooked timber of humanity, no straight thing was ever made.

The main point of enlightenment is man’s release from his self-caused immaturity, primarily in matters of religion.

If justice perishes, then it is no longer worthwhile for men to live upon the earth.

From such crooked timber as humanity is made of, no straight thing was ever constructed.

We can never, even by the strictest examination, get completely behind the secret springs of action.

All bad precedents begin as justifiable measures.

The beginning of wisdom is the definition of terms.

Love begins with a smile, grows with a kiss, and ends with a teardrop.

We sometimes encounter people, even perfect strangers, who begin to interest us at first sight, somehow suddenly, all at once, before a word has been spoken.

Begin a beginner doesn’t mean as you’re bad something. It means there’s space to grow.

Envy creates the beginning of strife.

In the beginning was simplicity.

Happiness left when one began chasing it. It was always there.