The schools must fashion the person, and fashion him in such a way that he simply cannot will otherwise than what you wish him to will.

He who is firm in will molds the world to himself.

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.

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.

Humanity may endure the loss of everything; all its possessions may be turned away without infringing its true dignity - all but the possibility of improvement.

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.

Upon the progress of knowledge the whole progress of the human race is immediately dependent: he who retards that, hinders this also.