gainst a background where the Creator had opened out
the universe; a spiritual influence went out from him; his sufferings
were adopted as an example, and his transfiguration was the pledge of
ever-lastingness.

As a coal is revived by incense, so prayer revives the hopes of the
heart.

From a strict point of view we must have a reformation of ourselves
every day, and protest against others, even though it be in no religious
sense.

It should be our earnest endeavor to use words coinciding as closely as
possible with what we feel, see, think, experience, imagine and reason.
It is an endeavor which we cannot evade, and which is daily to be
renewed.

Let every man examine himself, and he will find this a much harder task
than he might suppose; for, unhappily, a man usually takes words as mere
make-shifts; his knowledge and his thought are in most cases better than
his method of expression.

False, irrelevant, and futile ideas may arise in ourselves and others,
or find their way into us from without. Let us persist in the effort to
remove them as far as we can, by plain and honest purpose.

Where I cannot be moral, my power is gone.

A man is not deceived by others; he deceives himself.

Laws are all made by old people and by men. Youths and women want the
exceptions, old people the rules.

Chinese, Indian and Egyptian antiquities are never more than
curiosities; it is well to make acquaintance with them; but in point of
moral and aesthetic culture they can help us little.

The German runs no greater danger than to advance with and by the
example of his neighbors. There is perhaps no nation that is fitter for
the process of self-development; so that it has proved of the greatest
advantage to Germany to have obtained the notice of the world so late.

The greatest difficulties lie where we do not look for them.

The mind endowed with active powers and keeping with a practical object
to the task that lies nearest, is the worthiest there is on earth.

Perfection is the measure of heaven, and the wish to be perfect the
measure of man.

When a great idea enters the world as a Gospel, it becomes an offense to
the multitude, which stagnates in pedantry; and to those who have much
learning, but little depth, it is folly.

You may recognize the utility of an idea, and yet not quite understand
how to make a perfect use of it.

_Credo Deum_! That is a fine, a worthy thing to say; but to recognize
God where and as