Let us live in as small a circle as we will, we are either debtors or creditors before we have had time to look around.

Every situation--nay, every moment--is of infinite worth; for it is the representative of a whole eternity.

Those only obtain love, for the most part, who seek it not.

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.

I am certain that I have been here as I am now a thousand times before, and I hope to return a thousand times... Man is a dialogue between nature and God. On other planets this dialogue will doubtless be of a higher and profounder character. What is lacking is Self-Knowledge. After that the rest will follow.

Mathematicians are like Frenchmen: whatever you say to them they translate into their own language and forthwith it is something entirely different.

It is not enough to take steps which may someday lead to a goal; each step must be itself a goal and a step likewise.