Women are certainly more happy in this than we men: their employments occupy a smaller portion of their thoughts, and the earnest longing of the heart, the beautiful inner life of the fancy, always commands the greater part.

The essence of the religious emotions consists in the feeling of an absolute dependence.

Virtue is only a conflict by which we get the mastery of our failings; that, by which every man proves his peculiar power of understanding the will and spirit of God, is only a silent working of the inner man.

For when it is the good that is under consideration, and the ethical object is predominant, truth must be considered more in reference to art than science, if, that is, unity is to be preserved in the work generally.

Either the translator leaves the author in peace, as much as is possible, and moves the reader towards him: or he leaves the reader in peace, as much as possible, and moves the author towards him.

Our own theory is that sin was ordained only in view of redemption, and that accordingly redemption shows forth as the gain bound up with sin; in comparison with which there can be no question whatever of mischief due to sin, for the merely gradual and imperfect unfolding of the power of the God-consciousness is one of the necessary conditions of the human stage of existence.

And, moreover, it is art in its most general and comprehensive form that is here discussed, for the dialogue embraces everything connected with it, from its greatest object, the state, to its least, the embellishment of sensuous existence.