Dear and most respected bookcase! I welcome your existence, which has for over one hundred years been devoted to the radiant ideals of goodness and justice.
We live in an age which is so possessed by demons, that soon we shall only be able to do goodness and justice in the deepest secrecy, as if it were a crime.
For there is but one essential justice which cements society, and one law which establishes this justice. This law is right reason, which is the true rule of all commandments and prohibitions. Whoever neglects this law, whether written or unwritten, is necessarily unjust and wicked.
It [Justice] is complete virtue in the fullest sense, because it is the active exercise of complete virtue; and it is complete because its possessor can exercise it in relation to another person, and not only by himself.
Never mind the ridicule, never mind the defeat: up again, old heart!-it seems to say,-there is victory yet for all justice; and the true romance which the world exists to realize, will be the transformation of genius into practical power.
Justice, though moving with tardy pace, has seldom failed to overtake the wicked in their flight.
[Lat., Raro antecedentem scelestum
Deseruit pede poena claudo.]
The fantastic political and economic burdens imposed by that treaty have entirely disillusioned the German people and annihilated its belief in justice.