The world is not a factory and animals are not products for our use

It is with trifles, and when he is off guard, that a man best reveals his character.

The ordinary method of education is to imprint ideas and opinions, in the strict sense of the word, prejudices, on the mind of the child, before it has had any but a very few particular observations. It is thus that he afterwards comes to view the world and gather experience through the medium of those ready-made ideas, rather than to let his ideas be formed for him out of his own experience of life, as they ought to be.

Mensch kann tun was er will; er kann aber nicht wollen was er will. (One can choose what to do, but not what to want.)

Pride works _from within_; it is the direct appreciation of oneself. Vanity is the desire to arrive at this appreciation indirectly, from without.

If children were brought into the world by an act of pure reason alone, would the human race continue to exist? Would not a man rather have so much sympathy with the coming generation as to spare it the burden of existence, or at any rate not take it upon himself to impose that burden upon it in cold blood?

It is in the treatment of trifles that a person shows what they are.