The function of prayer is not to influence God, but rather to change the nature of the one who prays.

However much one generation learns from another, it can never learn from its predecessor the genuinely human factor. In this respect every generation begins afresh. Thus no generation has learned from another how to love, no generation can begin other than at the beginning.

It is more blessed to give than to receive, but then it is also more blessed to be able to do without than to have to have.

Death cannot explain itself. The earnestness consists precisely in this, that the observer must explain it to himself.

Trouble is the common denominator of living. It is the great equalizer.

A good decision is our will to do everything we can within our power. It means to serve God with all we've got, be it little or much. Every person can do that.

One is not unpopular because he uses peculiar expressions; that just so happens; such terms become a fad, and by and by everybody, down to the last simpleton, uses them. But a person who follows through an idea in his mind is, and always will be, essentially unpopular. That is why Socrates was unpopular, though he did not use any special terms, for to grasp and hold his 'ignorance' requires greater vital effort than understanding the whole of Hegel's philosophy.