We know only that our entire existence is forced into new paths and disrupted, that new circumstances, new joys and new sorrows await us, and that the unknown has its uncanny attractions, alluring and at the same time anguishing.

Poverty sits by the cradle of all our great men and rocks all of them to manhood.

Round my cradle shimmered the last moonbeams of the eighteenth century and the first morning rays of the nineteenth.

In earlier religions the spirit of the time was expressed through the individual and confirmed by miracles. In modern religions the spirit is expressed through the many and confirmed by reason.

Every age has its problem, by solving which humanity is helped forward.

In action, the English have the advantage enjoyed by free men always entitled to free discussion: of having a ready judgment on every question. We Germans, on the other hand, are always thinking. We think so much that we never form a judgment.

Experience is a good school. But the fees are high.