Religion is the recognition of all our duties as divine commands.
All trades, arts, and handiworks have gained by division of labor... Where the different kinds of work are not distinguished and divided, where everyone is a jack-of-all-trades, there manufactures remain still in the greatest barbarism.
If education is to develop human nature so that it may attain the object of its being, it must involve the exercise of judgment.
There is no virtue in penance and fasting which waste the body; they are only fanatical and monkish.
Do the right thing because it is right.
Patience is the strength of the weak, impatience is the weakness of the strong.
In the mere concept of one thing it cannot be found any character of its existence.
The wise man can change his mind; the stubborn one, never.
If we knew that god exists, such knowledge would make morality impossible. For, if we acted morally from fear or fright, or confident of a reward, then this would not be moral. It would be enlightened selfishness.
You only know me as you see me, not as I actually am.
At some future day it will be proved, I cannot say when and where, that the human soul is, while in earth life, already in an uninterrupted communication with those living in another world.
But a lie is a lie, and in itself intrinsically evil, whether it be told with good or bad intents.
Art does not want the representation of a beautiful thing, but the representation of something beautiful.
All perception is colored by emotion.
Maximum individuality within maximum community.
The only thing that is good without qualification is a good will.
Nothing is divine but what is agreeable to reason.
Intuition and concepts constitute... the elements of all our knowledge, so that neither concepts without an intuition in some way corresponding to them, nor intuition without concepts, can yield knowledge.
For how is it possible, says that acute man, that when a concept is given me, I can go beyond it and connect with it another which is not contained in it, in such a manner as if that latter necessarily belonged to the former?
A single line in the Bible has consoled me more than all the books I ever read besides.