Иоганн Гёте - Maxims and Reflections

85

Memory may vanish so long as at the moment judgment does not fail you.

86

No nation gains the power of judgment except it can pass judgment on itself. But to attain this great privilege takes a very long time.

87

Instead of contradicting my words people ought to act in my spirit.

88

Those who oppose intellectual truths do but stir up the fire, and the cinders fly about and burn what they had else not touched.

89

Man would not be the finest creature in the world if he were not too fine for it.

90

What a long time people were vainly disputing about the Antipodes!

91

Certain minds must be allowed their peculiarities.

92

Snow is false purity.

93

Whoso shrinks from ideas ends by having nothing but sensations.

94

Those from whom we are always learning are rightly called our masters; but not every one who teaches us deserves this title.

95

It is with you as with the sea: the most varied names are given to what is in the end only salt water.

96

It is said that vain self–praise stinks in the nostrils. That may be so; but for the kind of smell which comes from unjust blame by others the public has no nose at all.

97

There are problematical natures which are equal to no position in which they find themselves, and which no position satisfies. This it is that causes that hideous conflict which wastes life and deprives it of all pleasure.

98

If we do any real good, it is mostly clam, vi, et precario .

99

Dirt glitters as long as the sun shines.

100

It is difficult to be just to the passing moment. We are bored by it if it is neither good nor bad; but the good moment lays a task upon us, and the bad moment a burden.

101

He is the happiest man who can set the end of his life in connection with the beginning.

102

So obstinately contradictory is man that you cannot compel him to his advantage, yet he yields before everything that forces him to his hurt.

103

Forethought is simple, afterthought manifold.

104

A state of things in which every day brings some new trouble is not the right one.

105

When people suffer by failing to look before them, nothing is commoner than trying to look out for some possible remedy.

106

The Hindoos of the Desert make a solemn vow to eat no fish.

107

To venture an opinion is like moving a piece at chess: it may be taken, but it forms the beginning of a game that is won.

108

It is as certain as it is strange that truth and error come from one and the same source. Thus it is that we are often not at liberty to do violence to error, because at the same time we do violence to truth.

109

Truth belongs to the man, error to his age. This is why it has been said that, while the misfortune of the age caused his error, the force of his soul made him emerge from the error with glory.

110

Every one has his peculiarities and cannot get rid of them; and yet many a one is destroyed by his peculiarities, and those too of the most innocent kind.

111

If a man does think too much of himself, he is more than he believes himself to be.

112

In art and knowledge, as also in deed and action, everything depends on a pure apprehension of the object and a treatment of it according to its nature.

113

When intelligent and sensible people despise knowledge in their old age, it is only because they have asked too much of it and of themselves.

114

I pity those who make much ado about the transitory nature of all things and are lost in the contemplation of earthly vanity: are we not here to make the transitory permanent? This we can do only if we know how to value both.

115

A rainbow which lasts a quarter of an hour is looked at no more.

116

It used to happen, and still happens, to me to take no pleasure in a work of art at the first sight of it, because it is too much for me; but if I suspect any merit in it, I try to get at it; and then I never fail to make the most gratifying discoveries,—to find new qualities in the work itself and new faculties in myself.

117

Faith is private capital, kept in one's own house. There are public savings–banks and loan–offices, which supply individuals in their day of need; but here the creditor quietly takes his interest for himself.

118

Real obscurantism is not to hinder the spread of what is true, clear, and useful, but to bring into vogue what is false.

119

During a prolonged study of the lives of various men both great and small, I came upon this thought: In the web of the world the one may well be regarded as the warp, the other as the woof. It is the little men, after all, who give breadth to the web, and the great men firmness and solidity; perhaps, also, the addition of some sort of pattern. But the scissors of the Fates determine its length, and to that all the rest must join in submitting itself.

120

Truth is a torch, but a huge one, and so it is only with blinking eyes that we all of us try to get past it, in actual terror of being burnt.

121

'The wise have much in common with one another.' Æschylus .

122

The really foolish thing in men who are otherwise intelligent is that they fail to understand what another person says, when he does not exactly hit upon the right way of saying it.

Because a man speaks, he thinks he is able to speak about language.

124

One need only grow old to become gentler in one's judgments. I see no fault committed which I could not have committed myself.

125

The man who acts never has any conscience; no one has any conscience but the man who thinks.

126

Why should those who are happy expect one who is miserable to die before them in a graceful attitude, like the gladiator before the Roman mob?

127

Some one asked Timon about the education of his children. 'Let them,' he said, 'be instructed in that which they will never understand.'

128

There are people whom I wish well, and would that I could wish better.

129

By force of habit we look at a clock that has run down as if it were still going, and we gaze at the face of a beauty as though she still loved.

130

Hatred is active displeasure, envy passive. We need not wonder that envy turns so soon to hatred.

131

There is something magical in rhythm; it even makes us believe that we possess the sublime.

132

Dilettantism treated seriously, and knowledge pursued mechanically, end by becoming pedantry.

133

No one but the master can promote the cause of Art. Patrons help the master,—that is right and proper; but that does not always mean that Art is helped.

134

The most foolish of all errors is for clever young men to believe that they forfeit their originality in recognising a truth which has already been recognised by others.

135

Scholars are generally malignant when they are refuting others; and if they think a man is making a mistake, they straightway look upon him as their mortal enemy.

136

Beauty can never really understand itself.

137

It is much easier to recognise error than to find truth; for error lies on the surface and may be overcome; but truth lies in the depths, and to search for it is not given to every one.

138

We all live on the past, and through the past are destroyed.

139

We are no sooner about to learn some great lesson than we take refuge in our own innate poverty of soul, and yet for all that the lesson has not been quite in vain.

140

The world of empirical morality consists for the most part of nothing but ill–will and envy.