47 quotes
Who am I? Subject and object in one — contemplating and contemplated, thinking and thought of. As both must I have become what I am.
The Vocation of Man (1800)
There is but One who is absolutely by and through himself, — namely, God; and God is not the mere dead conception to which we have thus given utterance, but he is in himself pure Life.
Outline of the Doctrine of Knowledge (1810)
Every other art,—as poetry, music, painting,—may be practised without the process showing forth the rules according to which it is conducted ;—but in the self-cognizant art of the philosopher, no step can be taken without declaring the grounds upon which it proceeds.
The Characteristics of the Present Age (1806)
By means of this Power, I shall therefore, within its sphere, — the World of Sense, — produce and make manifest that which I recognise as my true Being in the Supersensuous World.
Outline of the Doctrine of Knowledge (1810)
If you want to influence him at all, you must do more than merely talk to him ; you must fashion him, and fashion him in such a way that he simply cannot will otherwise than you wish him to will.
Addresses to the German Nation (1807)
Science raises itself above all Ages and all Times, embracing and apprehending the ONE UNCHANGING TIME as the higher source of all Ages and Epochs, and grasping that vast idea in its free, unbounded comprehension.
The Characteristics of the Present Age (1806)
I am only a Schema of the Schema.
Outline of the Doctrine of Knowledge (1810)
Each individual imagines that he can exist, live, think, and act for himself, and believes that he himself is the thinking principle of his thoughts; whereas in truth he is but a single ray of the ONE universal and necessary Thought.
The Characteristics of the Present Age (1806)
The divine life that underlies all appearance reveals itself never as a fixed and known entity, but as something that is to be; and after it has become what it was to be, it will reveal itself again to all eternity as something that is to be.
Marriage is a union between two persons — one man and one woman. A woman who has given herself up to one, can not give herself up to a second, for her whole dignity requires that she should belong only to this one.
Am I a free agent, or am I merely the manifestation of a foreign power? Neither appear sufficiently well founded.By the most courageous resolve of my life am I reduced to this! what Power can save me from it, from myself?
The Vocation of Man (1800)
As Being and Life are one and the same, so are Death and Nothingness one and the same. But there is no real Death and no real Nothing ness, as we have already said. There is, however, an Apparent Life, and this is the mixture of life and death, of being and nothingness.
It is so by nature that the plant will develop with regularity, that the animal will move purposefully, and that human beings will think. Why should I take exception to recognizing also the last as the expression of an original force of nature, as I do the first and the second?
The Vocation of Man (1800)
If, in the onflow of Time, the Ego, in every successive moment, had to determine itself by a particular act, through the conception of what it shall, — then in its original Unity, it was assuredly indeterminate, and only continuously determinable in an Infinite Time.
Outline of the Doctrine of Knowledge (1810)
All life, Omnipotent Father, is thy life! and the eye of religion alone penetrates to the realms of truth and beauty. I am related to thee, and what I behold around me is related to me; all is full of animation, and looks towards me with bright spiritual eyes, and speaks with spirit voices to my heart.
The Vocation of Man (1800)
It is the destiny of our race to become united into one great body, thoroughly connected in all its parts, and possessed of similar culture. Nature, and even the passions and vices of Man, have from the beginning tended towards this end. A great part of the way towards it is already passed, and we may surely calculate that it will in time be reached.
The Vocation of Man (1800)
The new education must consist essentially in this, that it completely destroys freedom of will in the soil which it undertakes to cultivate, and produces on the contrary strict necessity in the decisions of the will, the opposite being impossible. Such a will can henceforth be relied on with confidence and certainty.
Addresses to the German Nation (1807)
This method of mental training is, therefore, the immediate preparation for the moral; it completely destroys the root of immorality by never allowing sensuous enjoyment to become the motive. Formerly, that was the first motive to be stimulated and developed, because it was believed that otherwise the pupil could not be influenced or controlled at all.
Will is the immediate consciousness of the activity of the inward powers of our Nature. The immediate consciousness of an effort, an aspiration of these powers which is not yet activity, because restrained by opposing forces — this is inclination or desire; the struggle of contending forces is irresolution; the victory of one is the resolution of the will.
The Destination of Man (1799)
If I only know what I am convinced of and have found out myself, if I really only know what I have experienced myself, then indeed I cannot say that I have the least knowledge about my vocation; I only know what others claim to know about it.
The Vocation of Man (1800)