The mind endowed with active powers and keeping with a practical object to the task that lies nearest, is the worthiest there is on earth.

Perfection is the measure of heaven, and the wish to be perfect the measure of man.

When a great idea enters the world as a Gospel, it becomes an offense to the multitude, which stagnates in pedantry; and to those who have much learning, but little depth, it is folly.

You may recognize the utility of an idea, and yet not quite understand how to make a perfect use of it.

Credo Deum!  That is a fine, a worthy thing to say; but to recognize God where and as he reveals himself, is the only true bliss on earth.

Kepler said:  ’My wish is that I may perceive the God whom I find everywhere in the external world, in like manner also within and inside me.’  The good man was not aware that, in that very moment, the divine in him stood in the closest connection with the divine in the Universe.

What is predestination?  It is this:  God is mightier and wiser than we are, and so he does with us as he pleases.

Toleration should, strictly speaking, be only a passing mood; it ought to lead to acknowledgment and appreciation.  To tolerate a person is to affront him.

Faith, Love and Hope once felt, in a quiet sociable hour, a plastic impulse in their nature; they worked together and created a lovely image, a Pandora in the higher sense, Patience.

‘I stumbled over the roots of the tree which I planted.’  It must have been an old forester who said that.

Does the sparrow know how the stork feels?

Lamps make oil spots, and candles want snuffing; it is only the light of heaven that shines pure and leaves no stain.

If you miss the first button-hole, you will not succeed in buttoning up your coat.

A burnt child dreads the fire; an old man who has often been singed is afraid of warming himself.

It is not worth while to do anything for the world that we have with us, as the existing order may in a moment pass away.  It is for the past and the future that we must work:  for the past, to acknowledge its merits; for the future, to try to increase its value.

Let no one think that people have waited for him as for the Savior.

Character in matters great and small consists in a man steadily pursuing the things of which he feels himself capable.

Can a nation become ripe?  That is a strange question.  I would answer, Yes! if all the men could be born thirty years of age.  But as youth will always be too forward and old age too backward, the really mature man is always hemmed in between them, and has to resort to strange devices to make his way through.