Denotation by means of sounds and markings is a remarkable abstraction. Three letters designate God for me; several lines a million things. How easy becomes the manipulation of the universe here, how evident the concentration of the intellectual world! Language is the dynamics of the spiritual realm. One word of command moves armies; the word Liberty entire nations.

Everywhere we seek the Absolute, and always we find only things.

Friends, the soil is poor, we must sow seeds in plenty for us to garner even modest harvests.

The poem of the understanding is philosophy.

Philosophy ... bears witness to the deepest love of reflection, to absolute delight in wisdom.

Every stage of education begins with childhood. That is why the most educated person on earth so much resembles a child.

Only the most perfect human being can design the most perfect philosophy.

Morality must be the heart of our existence, if it is to be what it wants to be for us. ... The highest form of philosophy is ethics. Thus all philosophy begins with “I am.” The highest statement of cognition must be an expression of that fact which is the means and ground for all cognition, namely, the goal of the I.

To get to know a truth properly, one must polemicize it.

To romanticize the world is to make us aware of the magic, mystery and wonder of the world; it is to educate the senses to see the ordinary as extraordinary, the familiar as strange, the mundane as sacred, the finite as infinite.