This is the hardest of all: to close the open hand out of love, and keep modest as a giver.

A book should long for pen, ink, and writing-table: but usually it is pen, ink, and writing-table that long for a book. That is why books are so negligible nowadays.

I wish to be at any time hereafter only a yea-sayer!

Acknowledge your will and speak to us all, "This alone is what I will to be!" Hang your own penal code up above you: we want to be its enforcers!

We must learn to love, learn to be kind, and this from the earliest youth; if education or chance give us no opportunity to practice these feelings, our soul becomes dry and unsuited even to understanding the tender inventions of loving people.

The problem of culture is seldom grasped correctly. The goal of a culture is not the greatest possible happiness of a people, noris it the unhindered development of all their talents; instead, culture shows itself in the correct proportion of these developments. Its aim points beyond earthly happiness: the production of great works is the aim of culture.

A thought, even a possibility, can shatter and transform us.