The course of everything goes to teach us faith.

Our desires presage the capacities within us; they are harbingers of what we shall be able to accomplish. What we can do and want to do is projected in our imagination, quite outside ourselves, and into the future. We are attracted to what is already ours in secret. Thus passionate anticipation transforms what is indeed possible into dreamt-for reality.

Men are not philosophers, but are rather very foolish children, who, by reason of their partiality, see everything in the most absurd manner, and are the victims at all times of the nearest object. There is even no philosopher who is a philosopher at all times. Our experience, our perception is conditioned by the need to acquire in parts and in succession, that is, with every truth a certain falsehood.

The reverence for the Scriptures is an element of civilization, for thus has the history of the world been preserved, and is preserved.

Insist on your life, never imitate... do that which is assigned to you, and you cannot hope too much or dare too much.

Economy does not consist in saving the coal, but in using the time while it burns.

Success goes thus invariably with a certain plus or positive power: an ounce of power must balance an ounce of weight.