“From such crooked wood as that which man is made of, nothing straight can be fashioned.”

He who would know the world must first manufacture it.

We are not rich by what we possess but by what we can do without.

It is impossible to conceive anything at all in the world, or even out of it, which can be taken as good without qualification, except a good will.

I had to deny knowledge in order to make room for faith.

If God should really speak to man, man could still never know that it was God speaking.

How things may be in themselves, without regard to the representations through which they affect us, is utterly beyond the sphere of our cognition.

Dare to think!

But although all our knowledge begins with experience, it does not follow that it arises from experience.

The reading of all good books is like a conversation with the finest minds of past centuries.

Look closely. The beautiful may be small.

In every department of physical science there is only so much science, properly so-called, as there is mathematics.

Nothing can possibly be conceived in the world, or even out of it, which can be called good, without qualification, except a good will.

Better the whole people perish than that injustice be done.

Beauty presents an indeterminate concept of Understanding, the sublime an indeterminate concept of Reason.

By a lie a man throws away and as it were annihilates his dignity as a man.

It is not without cause that men feel the burden of their existence, though they are themselves the cause of those burdens.

Of all the preposterous assumptions of humanity over humanity, nothing exceeds most of the criticisms made on the habits of the poor by the well-housed, well- warmed, and well-fed.

I expect to plead not for the slave only, but for suffering humanity everywhere. Especially do I mean to labor for the elevation of my sex.

It is almost impossible to exaggerate the proneness of the human mind to take miracles as evidence, and to seek for miracles as evidence.

A feminist is anyone who recognizes the equality and full humanity of women and men.

We don’t all dig Shakespeare uniformly, or even ‘Little Red Riding Hood.’ The understanding of art depends finally upon one’s willingness to extend one’s humanity and one’s knowledge of human life.

Of all the calamities to which humanity is subject, none is so dreadful as insanity. … All experience shows that insanity seasonably treated is as certainly curable as a cold or a fever.

The greater part of humanity is too much harassed and fatigued by the struggle with want, to rally itself for a new and sterner struggle with error.

Humanity is the higher meaning of our planet, the nerve that connects this part of it with the upper world, the eye it raises to heaven.