12 quotes
By conscience alone comes truth and reality into my representations.
The Vocation of Man (1800)
The law of the transcendental world must, therefore, be a Will.
The Vocation of Man (1800)
My consciousness of the object is only a yet unrecognised consciousness of my production of the representation of an object.
The Vocation of Man (1800)
I veil my face before thee, and lay my finger on my lips.
The Vocation of Man (1800)
Reason does not exist for the sake of life, but life for the sake of reason. An existence which does not of itself satisfy reason and solve all her doubts, cannot be the true one.
The Vocation of Man (1800)
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)
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)
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)
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)
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)
Of what I am, I know no more than that I am, but here no tie is necessary between subject and object. My own being is this tie, I am at once the subject knowing, and the object known of; and this reflection or return of the knowledge on itself is what I designate by the term I, if I have any determinate meaning.
The Vocation of Man (1800)