I feel all those human beings to be pernicious who can no longer oppose what they love: they thereby ruin the best things and people.

Many are obstinate with regard to the pathway once they have set upon it, few with regard to the goal.

He who knows not how to plant his will in things at least endows them with some meaning: that is to say, he believes that a will is already present in them (A principle of faith.)

The hour-hand of life.

Under conditions of peace the warlike man attacks himself.

The genius-in work and in deed-is necessarily a squanderer: the fact that he spends himself constitutes his greatness.

My conception of freedom. — The value of a thing sometimes does not lie in that which one attains by it, but in what one pays for it — what it costs us. Liberal institutions cease to be liberal as soon as they are attained: later on, there are no worse and no more thorough injurers of freedom than liberal institutions.