“The first philosophers were astronomers. The heavens remind man … that he is destined not merely to act, but also to contemplate.”

Section 9 : Ethical Outlook
Founding Address (1876), Life and Destiny (1913)
Context: There is a universal element in man which he can assert by so acting as if the purpose of the Universe were also his purpose. It is the function of the supreme ordeals of life to develop in men this power, to give to their life this distinction, this height of dignity, these vast horizons.

Source: Sex and Character (1903), pp. 139-140.

Source: What is Political Philosophy (1959), p. 91

Source: Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation (1844), p. 250

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Fruits of Solitude (1682), Part I

The Tragic Sense of Life (1913), I : The Man of Flesh and Bone
Context: If a philosopher is not a man, he is anything but a philosopher; he is above all a pedant, and a pedant is a caricature of a man. The cultivation of any branch of science — of chemistry, of physics, of geometry, of philology — may be a work of differentiated specialization, and even so, only within very narrow limits and restrictions; but philosophy, like poetry, is a work of integration and synthesis, or else it is merely pseudo-philosophical erudition.

Vol. 2 "On Various Subjects" as translated in Essays and Aphorisms (1970), as translated by R. J. Hollingdale
Parerga and Paralipomena (1851), Counsels and Maxims

The Story of Religious Controversy http://www.infidels.org/library/historical/joseph_mccabe/religious_controversy/ (1929), p. 86.