There are but few who have ideas and are, at the same time, capable of action. Ideas enlarge but stymie, action enlivens but confines.

The theater has often been at variance with the pulpit; they ought not to quarrel. How much is it to be wished that in both the celebration of nature and of God were intrusted to none but men of noble minds.

To know where a thing is we must have found it.

Difficulties increase the nearer we get to the goal.

A teacher who can arouse a feeling for one single good action, for one single good poem, accomplishes more than he who fills our memory with rows and rows of natural objects, classified with name and form.

There are situations in which hope and fear run together, in which they mutually destroy one another and lose themselves in dull indifference.

One is never deceived; one deceives oneself.