Age merely shows what children we remain.

What makes people happy is activity; changing evil itself into good by power, working in a God like manner.

The summit charms us, the steps to it do not; with the heights before our eyes, we like to linger in the plain. It is only a part of art that can be taught; but the artist needs the whole. He who is only half instructed speaks much and is always wrong; who knows it wholly is content with acting and speaks seldom or late.

Whoever, in middle age, attempts to realize the wishes and hopes of his early youth, invariably deceives himself. Each ten years of a man's life has its own fortunes, its own hopes, its own desires.

When intelligent and sensible people despise knowledge in their old age, it is only because they have asked too much of it and of themselves.

The important thing is not to know more than all men, but to know more at each moment than any particular man.

There is nothing more frightful than for a teacher to know only what his scholars are intended to know.