A Christian cannot help being free, because in the pursuit and attainment of his object, no one can either hinder or retard him.

At the approach of danger two voices speak with equal force in the heart of man: one very reasonably tells the man to consider the nature of the danger and the means of avoiding it and the other, even more reasonable, says that it is too painful and harassing to think of the danger... better to turn aside from the painful subject till it has come, and to think of what is pleasant. In solitude a man generally yields to the first voice; in society to the second.

Life consists in penetrating the unknown, and fashioning our actions in accord with the new knowledge thus acquired.

This history of culture will explain to us the motives, the conditions of life, and the thought of the writer or reformer.

I have learned what must be, and therefore have come to see the whole horror of what is.

Music makes me forget my real situation. It transports me into a state which is not my own. Under the influence of music I really seem to feel what I do not feel, to understand what I do not understand, to have powers which I cannot have. Music seems to me to act like yawning or laughter; I have no desire to sleep, but I yawn when I see others yawn; with no reason to laugh, I laugh when I hear others laugh. And music transports me immediately into the condition of soul in which he who wrote the music found himself at that time. ~The Kreutzer Sonata

We love people not so much for the good they've done us, as for the good we've done them.