260
When we live with people who have a delicate sense of what is fitting, we get quite anxious about them if anything happens to disturb this sense.
261
No one would come into a room with spectacles on his nose, if he knew that women at once lose any inclination to look at or talk to him.
262
A familiar in the place of a respectful demeanour is always ridiculous.
263
There is no outward sign of politeness that will be found to lack some deep moral foundation. The right kind of education would be that which conveyed the sign and the foundation at the same time.
264
A man’s manners are the mirror in which he shows his portrait.
265
There is a politeness of the heart, and it is allied to love. It produces the most agreeable politeness of outward demeanour.
266
Voluntary dependence is the best state, and how should that be possible without love?
267
We are never further from our wishes than when we fancy we possess the object of them.
268
No one is more of a slave than he who thinks himself free without being so.
269
A man has only to declare himself free to feel at the same moment that he is limited. Should he venture to declare himself limited, he feels himself free.
270
Against the great superiority of another there is no remedy but love.
271
It is a terrible thing for an eminent man to be gloried in by fools.
272
It is said that no man is a hero to his valet. That is only because a hero can be recognised only by a hero. The valet will probably know how to appreciate his like, — his fellow-valet.
273
There is no greater consolation for mediocrity than that the genius is not immortal.
274
The greatest men are linked to their age by some weak point.
275
We generally take men to be more dangerous than they are.
276
Fools and wise folk are alike harmless. It is the half-wise, and the half-foolish, who are the most dangerous.
277
To see a difficult thing lightly handled gives us the impression of the impossible.
278
Difficulties increase the nearer we come to our aim.
279
Sowing is not so painful as reaping.
280
We are fond of looking to the future, because our secret wishes make us apt to turn in our favour the uncertainties which move about in it hither and thither.
281
It is not easy to be in any great assembly without thinking that the chance which brings so many people together will also make us meet our friends.
282
A man may live never so retired a life but he becomes a debtor or a creditor before he is aware of it.
283
If anyone meets us who owes us a debt of gratitude, it immediately crosses our mind. How often can we meet some one to whom we owe gratitude, without thinking of it!
284
To communicate oneself is Nature; to receive a communication as it is given is Culture.
285
No one would speak much in society if he were aware how often we misunderstand others.
286
It is only because we have not understood a thing that we cannot repeat it without alteration.
287
To make a long speech in the presence of others without flattering your audience, is to rouse dislike.
288
Every word that we utter rouses its contrary.
289
Contradiction and flattery make, both of them, bad conversation.
290
The pleasantest society is that in which there exists a genial deference amongst the members one towards another.
291
By nothing do men show their character more than by the things they laugh at.
292
The ridiculous springs from a moral contrast innocently presented to the senses.
293
The sensual man often laughs when there is nothing to laugh at. Whatever it is that moves him, he shows that he is pleased with himself.
294
An intelligent man finds almost everything ridiculous, a wise man hardly anything.
295
A man well on in years was reproved for still troubling himself about young women. ‘It is the only means,’ he replied, ‘of regaining one’s youth; and that is something every one wishes to do.’
296
A man does not mind being blamed for his faults, and being punished for them, and he patiently suffers much for the sake of them; but he becomes impatient if he is required to give them up.
297
Certain faults are necessary to the individual if he is to exist. We should not like old friends to give up certain peculiarities.
298
It is said of a man that he will soon die, when he acts in any way unlike himself.
299
What kind of faults in ourselves should we retain, nay, even cultivate? Those which rather flatter other people than offend them.
300
The passions are good or bad qualities, only intensified.
301
Our passions are, in truth, like the phoenix. When the old one burns away, the new one rises out of its ashes at once.
302
Great passions are hopeless diseases. That which could cure them is the first thing to make them really dangerous.
303
Passion is enhanced and tempered by avowal. In nothing, perhaps, is the middle course more desirable than in confidence and reticence towards those we love.
304
To sit in judgment on the departed is never likely to be equitable. We all suffer from life; who except God can call us to account? Let not their faults and sufferings, but what they have accomplished and done, occupy the survivors.
305
It is failings that show human nature, and merits that distinguish the individual; faults and misfortunes we all have in common; virtues belong to each one separately.
VI
306
The secret places in the way of life may not and cannot be revealed: there are rocks of offence on which every traveller must stumble. But the poet points to where they are.
307
It would not be worth while to see seventy years if all the wisdom of this world were foolishness with God.
308
The true is Godlike: we do not see it itself; we must guess at it through its manifestations.
309
The real scholar learns how to evolve the unknown from the known, and draws near the master.
310
In the smithy the iron is softened by blowing up the fire, and taking the dross from the bar. As soon as it is purified, it is beaten and pressed, and becomes firm again by the addition of fresh water. The same thing happens to a man at the hands of his teacher.
311
What belongs to a man, he cannot get rid of, even though he throws it away.
312
Of true religions there are only two: one of them recognises and worships the Holy that without form or shape dwells in and around us; and the other recognises and worships it in its fairest form. Everything that lies between these two is idolatry.
313
It is undeniable that in the Reformation the human mind tried to free itself; and the renaissance of Greek and Roman antiquity brought about the wish and longing for a freer, more seemly, and elegant life. The movement was favoured in no small degree by the fact that men’s hearts aimed at returning to a certain simple state of nature, while the imagination sought to concentrate itself.
314
The Saints were all at once driven from heaven; and senses, thought, and heart were turned from a divine mother wit
h a tender child, to the grown man doing good and suffering evil, who was later transfigured into a being half-divine in its nature, and then recognised and honoured as God himself. He stood against a background where the Creator had opened out the universe; a spiritual influence went out from him; his sufferings were adopted as an example, and his transfiguration was the pledge of everlastingness.
315
As a coal is revived by incense, so prayer revives the hopes of the heart.
316
From a strict point of view we must have a reformation of ourselves every day, and protest against others, even though it be in no religious sense.
317
It should be our earnest endeavour to use words coinciding as closely as possible with what we feel, see, think, experience, imagine, and reason. It is an endeavour which we cannot evade, and which is daily to be renewed.
Let every man examine himself, and he will find this a much harder task than he might suppose; for, unhappily, a man usually takes words as mere make-shifts; his knowledge and his thought are in most cases better than his method of expression.
False, irrelevant, and futile ideas may arise in ourselves and others, or find their way into us from without. Let us persist in the effort to remove them as far as we can, by plain and honest purpose.
318
As we grow older, the ordeals grow greater.
319
Where I cannot be moral, my power is gone.
320
A man is not deceived by others, he deceives himself.
321
Laws are all made by old people and by men. Youths and women want the exceptions, old people the rules.
322
It is not the intelligent man who rules, but intelligence; not the wise man, but wisdom.
323
To praise a man is to put oneself on his level.
324
It is not enough to know, we must also apply; it is not enough to will, we must also do.
325
Chinese, Indian, and Egyptian antiquities are never more than curiosities; it is well to make acquaintance with them; but in point of moral and æsthetic culture they can help us little.
326
The German runs no greater danger than to advance with and by the example of his neighbours. There is perhaps no nation that is fitter for the process of self-development; so that it has proved of the greatest advantage to Germany to have obtained the notice of the world so late.
327
Even men of insight do not see that they try to explain things which lie at the foundation of our experience, and in which we must simply acquiesce.
Yet still the attempt may have its advantage, as otherwise we should break off our researches too soon.
328
From this time forward, if a man does not apply himself to some art or handiwork, he will be in a bad way. In the rapid changes of the world, knowledge is no longer a furtherance; by the time a man has taken note of everything, he has lost himself.
329
Besides, in these days the world forces universal culture upon us, and so we need not trouble ourselves further about it; we must appropriate some particular culture.
330
The greatest difficulties lie where we do not look for them.
331
Our interest in public events is mostly the merest philistinism.
332
Nothing is more highly to be prized than the value of each day.
333
Pereant qui ante nos nostra dixerunt! This is so strange an utterance, that it could only have come from one who fancied himself autochthonous. The man who looks upon it as an honour to be descended from wise ancestors, will allow them at least as much common-sense as he allows himself.
334
Strictly speaking, everything depends upon a man’s intentions; where these exist, thoughts appear; and as the intentions are, so are the thoughts.
335
If a man lives long in a high position, he does not, it is true, experience all that a man can experience; but he experiences things like them, and perhaps some things that have no parallel elsewhere.
VII
336
The first and last thing that is required of genius is love of truth.
337
To be and remain true to oneself and others, is to possess the noblest attribute of the greatest talents.
338
Great talents are the best means of conciliation.
339
The action of genius is in a way ubiquitous: towards general truths before experience, and towards particular truths after it.
340
An active scepticism is one which constantly aims at overcoming itself, and arriving by means of regulated experience at a kind of conditioned certainty.
341
The general nature of the sceptical mind is its tendency to inquire whether any particular predicate really attaches to any particular object; and the purpose of the inquiry is safely to apply in practice what has thus been discovered and proved.
342
The mind endowed with active powers and keeping with a practical object to the task that lies nearest, is the worthiest there is on earth.
343
Perfection is the measure of heaven, and the wish to be perfect the measure of man.
344
Not only what is born with him, but also what he acquires, makes the man.
345
A man is well equipped for all the real necessities of life if he trusts his senses, and so cultivates them that they remain worthy of being trusted.
346
The senses do not deceive; it is the judgment that deceives.
347
The lower animal is taught by its organs; man teaches his organs, and dominates them.
348
All direct invitation to live up to ideals is of doubtful value, particularly if addressed to women. Whatever the reason of it may be, a man of any importance collects round him a seraglio of a more or less religious, moral, and æsthetic character.
349
When a great idea enters the world as a Gospel, it becomes an offence to the multitude, which stagnates in pedantry; and to those who have much learning but little depth, it is folly.
350
Every idea appears at first as a strange visitor, and when it begins to be realised, it is hardly distinguishable from phantasy and phantastery.
351
This it is that has been called, in a good and in a bad sense, ideology; and this is why the ideologist is so repugnant to the hard-working, practical man of every day.
352
You may recognise the utility of an idea, and yet not quite understand how to make a perfect use of it.
353
Credo Deum! That is a fine, a worthy thing to say; but to recognise God where and as he reveals himself, is the only true bliss on earth.
354
Kepler said: ‘My wish is that I may perceive the God whom I find everywhere in the external world, in like manner also within and inside me.’ The good man was not aware that in that very moment the divine in him stood in the closest connection with the divine in the Universe.
355
What is predestination? It is this: God is mightier and wiser than we are, and so he does with us as he pleases.
356
Toleration should, strictly speaking, be only a passing mood; it ought to lead to acknowledgment and appreciation. To tolerate a person is to affront him.
357
Faith, Love, and Hope once felt, in a quiet sociable hour, a plastic impulse in their nature; they worked together and created a lovely image, a Pandora in the higher sense, Patience.
358
‘I stumbled over the roots of the tree which I planted.’ It must have been an old forester who said that.
359
A leaf blown by the wind often looks like a bird.
360
Does the sparrow know how th
e stork feels?
361
Lamps make oil-spots, and candles want snuffing; it is only the light of heaven that shines pure and leaves no stain.
362
If you miss the first button-hole, you will not succeed in buttoning up your coat.
363
A burnt child dreads the fire; an old man who has often been singed is afraid of warming himself.
364
It is not worth while to do anything for the world that we have with us, as the existing order may in a moment pass away. It is for the past and the future that we must work: for the past, to acknowledge its merits; for the future, to try to increase its value.
365
Let every man ask himself with which of his faculties he can and will somehow influence his age.
366
Let no one think that people have waited for him as for the Saviour.
367
Character in matters great and small consists in a man steadily pursuing the things of which he feels himself capable.
368
The man who wants to be active and has to be so, need only think of what is fitting at the moment, and he will make his way without difficulty. This is where women have the advantage, if they understand it.
369
The moment is a kind of public; a man must deceive it into believing that he is doing something; then it leaves us alone to go our way in secret; whereat its grandchildren cannot fail to be astonished.
370
There are men who put their knowledge in the place of insight.
371
In some states, as a consequence of the violent movements experienced in almost all directions, there has come about a certain overpressure in the system of education, the harm of which will be more generally felt hereafter; though even now it is perfectly well recognised by capable and honest authorities. Capable men live in a sort of despair over the fact that they are bound by the rules of their office to teach and communicate things which they look upon as useless and hurtful.
372
There is no sadder sight than the direct striving after the unconditioned in this thoroughly conditioned world.
373
Before the Revolution it was all effort; afterwards it all changed to demand.
374
Can a nation become ripe? That is a strange question. I would answer, Yes! if all the men could be born thirty years of age. But as youth will always be too forward and old age too backward, the really mature man is always hemmed in between them, and has to resort to strange devices to make his way through.
Works of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Page 333