"The man who allows himself to be deceived and carried away by his own weakness may be a very amiable person in other respects, but he cannot be called a man — only a sort of intermediate being between the two sexes."

"When a man allows pain to get the mastery over him, when he is anxious to avoid it on all occasions, and is ever moaning over what is unavoidable, then he becomes an object of contempt rather than pity. It is not so in the case of a woman. In a woman it is becoming enough, and seems natural, that she lean upon another being. The man ought certainly to possess the power of endurance; but if he fail, it must be regarded as a want or weakness. A man ought ever to strive to stand on his own independent bottom."

"We often find that religion is not understood in its true greatness, but that man looks at it from a lower point of view. He who worships God only on selfish principles, that he may receive protection, aid, and blessing in return, and who demands, as it were, that he should concern himself about the petty fate of every individual, such a one makes himself the central point of the whole universe; whereas he who thoroughly comprehends the greatness and fatherly goodness of God, receiving the idea with admiring devotion and deep thankfulness, so that he removes from his mind everything that does not accord with the purest and noblest conceptions; as, for instance, the thought that what duty and virtue require of him is at the same time the will of the Most High, and necessary for the proper regulation of the affairs of the world; such a man possesses a truly religious and virtuous mind."

"The impetuous conquests of Alexander, the more politic and premeditated extension of territory made by the Romans, the wild and cruel incursions of the Mexicans, and the despotic acquisitions of the incas, have in both hemispheres contributed to put an end to the separate existence of many tribes as independent nations, and tended at the same time to establish more extended international amalgamation. Men of great and strong minds, as well as whole nations, acted under the influence of one idea, the purity of which was, however, utterly unknown to them. It was Christianity which first promulgated the truth of its exalted charity, although the seed sown yielded but a slow and scanty harvest. Before the religion of Christ manifested its form, its existence was only revealed by a faint foreshadowing presentiment. In recent times, the idea of civilization has acquired additional intensity, and has given rise to a desire of extending more widely the relations of national intercourse and of intellectual cultivation; even selfishness begins to learn that by such a course its interests will be better served than by violent and forced isolation. Language more than any other attribute of mankind, binds together the whole human race. By its idiomatic properties it certainly seems to separate nations, but the reciprocal understanding of foreign languages connects men together on the other hand without injuring individual national characteristics."

"Es gibt schlechterdings gewisse Kenntnisse, die allgemein sein müssen, und noch mehr eine gewisse Bildung der Gesinnungen und des Charakters, die keinem fehlen darf. Jeder ist offenbar nur dann ein guter Handwerker, Kaufmann, Soldat und Geschäftsmann, wenn er an sich und ohne Hinsicht auf seinen besonderen Beruf ein guter, anständiger, seinem Stande nach aufgeklärter Mensch und Bürger ist. Gibt ihm der Schulunterricht, was hierfür erforderlich ist, so erwirbt er die besondere Fähigkeit seines Berufs nachher so leicht und behält immer die Freiheit, wie im Leben so oft geschieht, von einem zum andern überzugehen."

"Durch die gegenseitige Abhängigkeit des Gedankens, und des Wortes von einander leuchtet es klar ein, daß die Sprachen nicht eigentlich Mittel sind, die schonerkannte Welt darzustellen, sondern weit mehr, die vorher unerkannte zu entdecken. Ihre Verschiedenheit ist nicht eine von Schällen und Zeichen, sondern eine Verschiedenheit der Weltansichten selbst. Hierin ist der Grund, und der letzte Zweck aller Sprachuntersuchung enthalten. Die Summe des Erkennbaren liegt, als das von dem menschlichen Geiste zu bearbeitende Feld, zwischen allen Sprachen, und unabhängig von ihnen, in der Mitte; der Mensch kann sich diesem rein objectiven Gebiet nicht anders, als nach seiner Erkennungs- und Empfindungsweise, also auf einem subjectiven Wege, nähern."

"True enjoyment comes from activity of the mind and exercise of the body; the two are ever united."

"Governmental regulations all carry coercion to some degree, and even where they don't, they habituate man to expect teaching, guidance and help outside himself, instead of formulating his own."

"How a person masters his fate is more important than what his fate is."

"I am more and more convinced that our happiness or our unhappiness depends far more on the way we meet the events of life than on the nature of those events themselves."

"The most beautiful, perhaps the only true, philosophical song existing in any known tongue."

"If we would indicate an idea which, throughout the whole course of history, has ever more and more widely extended its empire, or which, more than any other, testifies to the much-contested and still more decidedly misunderstood perfectibility of the whole human race, it is that of establishing our common humanity — of striving to remove the barriers which prejudice and limited views of every kind have erected among men, and to treat all mankind, without reference to religion, nation, or color, as one fraternity, one great community, fitted for the attainment of one object, the unrestrained development of the physical powers. This is the ultimate and highest aim of society, identical with the direction implanted by nature in the mind of man toward the indefinite extension of his existence. He regards the earth in all its limits, and the heavens as far as his eye can scan their bright and starry depths, as inwardly his own, given to him as the objects of his contemplation, and as a field for the development of his energies. Even the child longs to pass the hills or the seas which inclose his narrow home; yet, when his eager steps have borne him beyond those limits, he pines, like the plant, for his native soil; and it is by this touching and beautiful attribute of man — this longing for that which is unknown, and this fond remembrance of that which is lost — that he is spared from an exclusive attachment to the present. Thus deeply rooted in the innermost nature of man, and even enjoined upon him by his highest tendencies, the recognition of the bond of humanity becomes one of the noblest leading principles in the history of mankind."