I am satisfied with, and stand firm as a rock on the belief that all that happens in God's world is for the best, but what is merely germ, what blossom and what fruit I do not know.

The person who doubts there is an external world does not need proof: he needs a cure.

A man can do what he ought to do; and when he says he cannot, it is because he will not.

Nothing is more destructive of individual character than for a man to lose all faith in his own abilities for the prosecution of his work.

The most reckless sinner against his own conscience has always in the background the consolation that he will go on in this course only this time, or only so long, but that at such a time he will amend. We may be assured that we do not stand clear with our own consciences so long as we determine or project, or even hold it possible, at some future time to alter our course of action.

All death in nature is birth, and at the moment of death appears visibly the rising of life. There is no dying principle in nature, for nature throughout is unmixed life, which, concealed behind the old, begins again and develops itself. Death as well as birth is simply in itself, in order to present itself ever more brightly and more like to itself.

What sort of philosophy one chooses depends on what sort of person one is.