It is not recognized in the full amplitude of the word that all freedom is essentially self-liberation - that I can have only so much freedom as I procure for myself by my owness.

From the moment when he catches sight of the light of the world, a man seeks to find out himself and get hold of himself out of its confusion, in which he, with everything else, is tossed about in motley mixture.

Yes, yes, children must early be made to practise piety, godliness, and propriety; a person of good breeding is one into whom good maxims have been instilled and impressed, poured in through a funnel, thrashed in and preached in.

We do not aspire to communal life but to a life apart.

If the child has not an object that it can occupy itself with, it feels ennui; for it does not yet know how to occupy itself with itself.

My power is my property. My power gives me property. My power am I myself, and through it am I my property.

Before what is sacred, people lose all sense of power and all confidence; they occupy a powerless and humble attitude toward it. And yet no thing is sacred of itself, but by my declaring it sacred, by my declaration, my judgment, my bending the knee; in short, by my conscience.