To become properly acquainted with a truth, we must first have disbelieved it, and disputed against it.
One should, when overwhelmed by the shadow of a giant, move aside and see if the colossal shadow isn’t merely that of a pygmy blocking out the sun.
The highest purpose of intellectual cultivation is to give a man a perfect knowledge and mastery of his own inner self.
The history of every individual man should be a Bible.
It is certain my belief gains quite infinitely the very moment I can convince another mind thereof.
How do we see physically? No differently that we do in our consciousness – by means of the productive power of imagination. Consciousness is the eye and ear, the sense for inner and outer meaning.
Mathematics is the Life of the Gods.
We are on a mission: we are called to the cultivation of the earth .
We touch heaven when we lay our hand on a human body!
Prayer is to religion what thinking is to philosophy. To pray is to make religion.
A certain degree of solitude seems necessary to the full growth and spread of the highest mind; and therefore must a very extensive intercourse with men stifle many a holy germ, and scare away the gods, who shun the restless tumult of noisy companies and the discussion of petty interests.
Building worlds is not enough for the deeper urging mind; but a loving heart sates the striving spirit.
Play is experimenting with chance.
Nature is a petrified magic city.
Hypotheses are nets: only he who casts will catch.
Not only England, but every Englishman is an island.
We never completely comprehend ourselves, but we can do far more than comprehend.
Nothing is more indispensable to true religiosity than a mediator that links us with divinity.
Friendship, love, and piety ought to be handled with a sort of mysterious secrecy; they ought to be spoken of only in the rare moments of perfect confidence, to be mutually understood in silence. Many things are too delicate to be thought; many more, to be spoken.
Darwin remarks that we are less dazzled by the light at waking, if we have been dreaming of visible objects. Happy are those who have here dreamt of a higher vision! They will the sooner be able to endure the glories of the world to come.
I often feel, and ever more deeply I realize, that fate and character are the same conception.