“Knowledge is only one half. Faith is the other.”

Only the most perfect human being can design the most perfect philosophy.

Philosophy bears witness to the deepest love of reflection, to absolute delight in wisdom.

A character is a completely fashioned will.

Life must not be a novel that is given to us, but one that is made by us.

The mysterious path goes inward. It is in us, and not anywhere else, where the eternity of the worlds, the past and the future are found.

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.

So, let us move forward with faith in ourselves, in our intelligence, in our indomitable spirit. Let us develop respect for all living things. Let us try to replace violence and intolerance with understanding and compassion and love.

I have come to the conclusion that the most important element in human life is faith.

When all is said and done, the life of faith is nothing if not an unending struggle of the spirit with every available weapon against the flesh.

Say what you will about the sweet miracle of unquestioning faith, I consider a capacity for it terrifying and absolutely vile.

I was taught to strive not because there were any guarantees of success but because the act of striving is in itself the only way to keep faith with life.

Who can really be faithful in great things if he has not learned to be faithful in the things of daily life?

I have always been the kid who’s asked ‘Why?’ In my faith, you’re just supposed to have faith. But I was always like, why?

When your center is firm, when your faith is strong and unwavering, then it will not matter what company you keep.