Johann Wolfgang von Goethe quotes

There is nothing worth thinking but it has been thought before; we must only try to think it again.

How can a man come to know himself? Never by thinking, but by doing. Try to do your duty, and you will know at once what you are worth.

But what is your duty? The claims of the day.

The world of reason is to be regarded as a great and immortal being, who ceaselessly works out what is necessary, and so makes himself lord also over what is accidental.

Be genuine and strenuous; earn for yourself, and look for, grace from those in high places; from the powerful, favour; from the active and the good, advancement; from the many, affection; from the individual, love.

Tell me with whom you associate, and I will tell you who you are. If I know what your business is, I know what can be made of you.

Every man must think after his own fashion; for on his own path he finds a truth, or a kind of truth, which helps him through life. But he must not give himself the rein; he must control himself; mere naked instinct does not become him.

Unqualified activity, of whatever kind, leads at last to bankruptcy.

In the works of mankind, as in those of nature, it is really the motive which is chiefly worth attention.

Men get out of countenance with themselves and others because they treat the means as the end, and so, from sheer doing, do nothing, or, perhaps, just what they would have avoided.

Our plans and designs should be so perfect in truth and beauty, that in touching them the world could only mar. We should thus have the advantage of setting right what is wrong, and restoring what is destroyed.

It is a very hard and troublesome thing to dispose of whole, half-, and quarter-mistakes; to sift them and assign the portion of truth to its proper place.

It is not always needful for truth to take a definite shape; it is enough if it hovers about us like a spirit and produces harmony; if it is wafted through the air like the sound of a bell, grave and kindly.

General ideas and great conceit are always in a fair way to bring about terrible misfortune.

You cannot play the flute by blowing alone: you must use your fingers.

In Botany there is a species of plants called Incompletæ; and just in the same way it can be said that there are men who are incomplete and imperfect. They are those whose desires and struggles are out of proportion to their actions and achievements.

It is only men of practical ability, knowing their powers and using them with moderation and prudence, who will be successful in worldly affairs.

It is a great error to take oneself for more than one is, or for less than one is worth.

But how is a young man to come of himself to see blame in things which every one is busy with, which every one approves and promotes? Why should he not follow his natural bent and go in the same direction as they?

But on all sides he is threatened by the spirit of the day, and nothing is more needful than to make him see early enough the direction in which his will has to steer.

Love of truth shows itself in this, that a man knows how to find and value the good in everything.

Character calls forth character.

If I am to listen to another man’s opinion, it must be expressed positively. Of things problematical I have enough in myself.

Superstition is a part of the very being of humanity; and when we fancy that we are banishing it altogether, it takes refuge in the strangest nooks and corners, and then suddenly comes forth again, as soon as it believes itself at all safe.

I keep silence about many things, for I do not want to put people out of countenance; and I am well content if they are pleased with things that annoy me.

Everything that frees our spirit without giving us control of ourselves is ruinous.

A man is really alive only when he delights in the good-will of others.

Piety is not an end, but a means: a means of attaining the highest culture by the purest tranquillity of soul.

Hence it may be observed that those who set up piety as an end and object are mostly hypocrites.

When a man is old he must do more than when he was young.

To fulfil a duty is still always to feel it as a debt, for it is never quite satisfying to oneself.

Defects are perceived only by one who has no love; therefore, to see them, a man must become uncharitable, but not more so than is necessary for the purpose.

The greatest piece of good fortune is that which corrects our deficiencies and redeems our mistakes.

Reading ought to mean understanding; writing ought to mean knowing something; believing ought to mean comprehending; when you desire a thing, you will have to take it; when you demand it, you will not get it; and when you are experienced, you ought to be useful to others.

The stream is friendly to the miller whom it serves; it likes to pour over the mill wheels; what is the good of it stealing through the valley in apathy?

Whoso is content with pure experience and acts upon it has enough of truth. The growing child is wise in this sense.

Theory is in itself of no use, except in so far as it makes us believe in the connection of phenomena.

When a man asks too much and delights in complication, he is exposed to perplexity.

In contemplation as in action, we must distinguish between what may be attained and what is unattainable. Without this, little can be achieved, either in life or in knowledge.

Le sense commun est le génie de l’humanité.

There is no piece of foolishness but it can be corrected by intelligence or accident; no piece of wisdom but it can miscarry by lack of intelligence or by accident.

There are two powers that make for peace: what is right, and what is fitting.

Justice insists on obligation, law on decorum. Justice weighs and decides, law superintends and orders. Justice refers to the individual, law to society.

The history of knowledge is a great fugue in which the voices of the nations one after the other emerge.

If a man is to achieve all that is asked of him, he must take himself for more than he is, and as long as he does not carry it to an absurd length, we willingly put up with it.

Work makes companionship.

People whip curds to see if they cannot make cream of them.

It is much easier to put yourself in the position of a mind taken up with the most absolute error, than of one which mirrors to itself half-truths.

Wisdom lies only in truth.

When I err, every one can see it; but not when I lie.

Is not the world full enough of riddles already, without our making riddles too out of the simplest phenomena?

The finest hair throws a shadow.’ Erasmus.

What I have tried to do in my life through false tendencies, I have at last learned to understand.

Generosity wins favour for every one, especially when it is accompanied by modesty.

Before the storm breaks, the dust rises violently for the last time—the dust that is soon to be laid forever.

Men do not come to know one another easily, even with the best will and the best purpose. And then ill-will comes in and distorts everything.

We should know one another better if one man were not so anxious to put himself on an equality with another.

Eminent men are therefore in a worse plight than others; for, as we cannot compare ourselves with them, we are on the watch for them.

In the world the point is, not to know men, but at any given moment to be cleverer than the man who stands before you. You can prove this at every fair and from every charlatan.

Not everywhere where there is water, are there frogs; but where you have frogs, there you will find water.

Error is quite right as long as we are young, but we must not carry it on with us into our old age.

In the formation of species Nature gets, as it were, into a cul-de-sac; she cannot make her way through, and is disinclined to turn back. Hence the stubbornness of national character.

Every one has something in his nature which, if he were to express it openly, would of necessity give offence.

If a man thinks about his physical or moral condition, he generally finds that he is ill.

Nature asks that a man should sometimes be stupefied without going to sleep; hence the pleasure in the smoking of tobacco, the drinking of brandy, the use of opiates.

The man who is up and doing should see to it that what he does is right. Whether or not right is done, is a matter which should not trouble him.

Many a man knocks about on the wall with his hammer, and believes that he hits the right nail on the head every time.

Painting and tattooing of the body is a return to animalism.

History-writing is a way of getting rid of the past.

What a man does not understand, he does not possess.

Not every one who has a pregnant thought delivered to him becomes productive; it probably makes him think of something with which he is quite familiar.

Favour, as a symbol of sovereignty, is exercised by weak men.

Every man has enough power left to carry out that of which he is convinced.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

Certain minds must be allowed their peculiarities.

Snow is false purity.

Whoso shrinks from ideas ends by having nothing but sensations.

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

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

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.

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.

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

Dirt glitters as long as the sun shines.

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.

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

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

Forethought is simple, afterthought manifold.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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?

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

Beauty can never really understand itself.

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.

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

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.

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

Life seems so vulgar, so easily content with the commonplace things of every day, and yet it always nurses and cherishes certain higher claims in secret, and looks about for the means of satisfying them.

Confidences are strange things. If you listen only to one man, it is possible that he is deceived or mistaken; if you listen to many, they are in a like case; and, generally, you cannot get at the truth at all.

No one should desire to live in irregular circumstances; but if by chance a man falls into them, they test his character and show of how much determination he is capable.

An honourable man with limited ideas often sees through the rascality of the most cunning jobber.

If a man feels no love, he must learn how to flatter; otherwise he will not succeed.

Against criticism a man can neither protest nor defend himself; he must act in spite of it, and then criticism will gradually yield to him.

The masses cannot dispense with men of ability, and such men are always a burden to them.

If a man spreads my failings abroad, he is my master, even though he were my servant.

Whether memoirs are written by masters of servants, or by servants of masters, the processes always meet.

If you lay duties upon people and give them no rights, you must pay them well.

I can promise to be sincere, but not to be impartial.

Ingratitude is always a kind of weakness. I have never known men of ability to be ungrateful.

We are all so limited that we always think we are right; and so we may conceive of an extraordinary mind which not only errs but has a positive delight in error.

It is very rare to find pure and steady activity in the accomplishment of what is good and right. We usually see pedantry trying to keep back, and audacity trying to go on too fast.

For the man of the world a collection of anecdotes and maxims is of the greatest value, if he knows how to intersperse the one in his conversation at fitting moments, and remember the other when a case arises for their application.

When you lose interest in anything, you also lose the memory for it.

The world is a bell with a crack in it; it rattles, but does not ring.

The importunity of young dilettanti must be borne with good-will; for as they grow old they become the truest worshippers of Art and the Master.

People have to become really bad before they care for nothing but mischief, and delight in it.

Clever people are the best encyclopædia.

There are people who make no mistakes because they never wish to do anything worth doing.

If I know my relation to myself and the outer world, I call it truth. Every man can have his own peculiar truth; and yet it is always the same.

No one is the master of any truly productive energy; and all men must let it work on by itself.

A man never understands how anthropomorphic he is.

A difference which offers nothing to the understanding is no difference at all.

A man cannot live for every one; least of all for those with whom he would not care to live.

If a man sets out to study all the laws, he will have no time left to transgress them.

Things that are mysterious are not yet miracles.

Converts are not in my good books.

A frivolous impulsive encouragement of problematical talents was a mistake of my early years; and I have never been able to abandon it altogether.

I should like to be honest with you, without our falling out; but it will not do. You act wrongly, and fall between two stools; you win no adherents and lose your friends. What is to be the end of it?

It is all one whether you are of high or of humble origin. You will always have to pay for your humanity.

If a clever man commits a folly, it is not a small one.

There is a poetry without figures of speech, which is a single figure of speech.

I went on troubling myself about general ideas until I learnt to understand the particular achievements of the best men.

It is only when a man knows little, that he knows anything at all. With knowledge grows doubt.

The errors of a man are what make him really lovable.

There are men who love their like and seek it; others love their opposite and follow after it.

If a man has always let himself think the world as bad as the adversary represents it to be, he must have become a miserable person.

Ill-favour and hatred limit the spectator to the surface, even when keen perception is added unto them; but when keen perception unites with good-will and love, it gets at the heart of man and the world; nay, it may hope to reach the highest goal of all.

Raw matter is seen by every one; the contents are found only by him who has his eyes about him; and the form is a secret to the majority.

We may learn to know the world as we please: it will always retain a bright and a dark side.

Error is continually repeating itself in action, and we must unweariedly repeat the truth in word.

As in Rome there is, apart from the Romans, a population of statues, so apart from this real world there is a world of illusion, almost more potent, in which most men live.

Mankind is like the Red Sea: the staff has scarcely parted the waves asunder, before they flow together again.

Thoughts come back; beliefs persist; facts pass by never to return.

Of all peoples, the Greeks have dreamt the dream of life the best.

We readily bow to antiquity, but not to posterity. It is only a father that does not grudge talent to his son.

There is no virtue in subordinating oneself; but there is virtue in descending, and in recognising anything as above us, which is beneath us.

The whole art of living consists in giving up existence in order to exist.

All our pursuits and actions are a wearying process. Well is it for him who wearies not.

Hope is the second soul of the unhappy.

Love is a true renovator.

Mankind is not without a wish to serve; hence the chivalry of the French is a servitude.

In the theatre the pleasure of what we see and hear restrains our reflections.

Truth is at variance with our natures, but not so error; and for a very simple reason. Truth requires us to recognise ourselves as limited, but error flatters us with the belief that in one way or another we are subject to no bounds at all.

That some men think they can still do what they have been able to do, is natural enough; that others think they can do what they have never been able to do, is singular, but not rare.

At all times it has not been the age, but individuals alone, who have worked for knowledge. It was the age which put Socrates to death by poison, the age which burnt Huss. The ages have always remained alike.

That is true Symbolism, where the more particular represents the more general, not as a dream or shade, but as a vivid, instantaneous revelation of the Inscrutable.

Everything of an abstract or symbolic nature, as soon as it is challenged by realities, ends by consuming them and itself. So credit consumes both money and itself.

Mastery often passes for egoism.

With Protestants, as soon as good works cease and their merit is denied, sentimentality takes their place.

If a man knows where to get good advice, it is as though he could supply it himself.

The use of mottoes is to indicate something we have not attained, but strive to attain. It is right to keep them always before our eyes.

If a man cannot lift a stone himself, let him leave it, even though he has some one to help him.

Despotism promotes general self-government, because from top to bottom it makes the individual responsible, and so produces the highest degree of activity.

A man must pay dear for his errors if he wishes to get rid of them, and even then he is lucky.

Enthusiasm is of the greatest value, so long as we are not carried away by it.

School itself is the only true preparation for it.

Error is related to truth as sleep to waking. I have observed that on awakening from error a man turns again to truth as with new vigour.

Every one suffers who does not work for himself. A man works for others to have them share in his joy.

Men’s prejudices rest upon their character for the time being and cannot be overcome, as being part and parcel of themselves. Neither evidence nor common-sense nor reason has the slightest influence upon them.

All men, as they attain freedom, give play to their errors. The strong do too much, and the weak too little.

A great work limits us for the moment, because we feel it above our powers; and only in so far as we afterwards incorporate it with our culture, and make it part of our mind and heart, does it become a dear and worthy object.

It is no wonder that we all more or less delight in the mediocre, because it leaves us in peace: it gives us the comfortable feeling of intercourse with what is like ourselves.

There is no use in reproving vulgarity, for it never changes.

We cannot escape a contradiction in ourselves; we must try to resolve it. If the contradiction comes from others, it does not affect us: it is their affair.

There are many things in the world that are at once good and excellent, but they do not come into contact.

Which is the best government? That which teaches us to govern ourselves.

However probable it is that a desire may be fulfilled, there is always a doubt; and so when the desire is realised, it is always surprising.

Absurdities presented with good taste rouse disgust and admiration.

Of the best society it used to be said: their speech instructs the mind, and their silence the feelings.

Nothing is more terrible than ignorance in action.

We treat the aged with consideration, as we treat children.

An old man loses one of the greatest of human privileges: he is no more judged by his peers.

In the matter of knowledge, it has happened to me as to one who rises early, and in the dark impatiently awaits the dawn, and then the sun; but is blinded when it appears.

Great primeval powers, evolved in time or in eternity, work on unceasingly: whether to weal or to woe, is a matter of chance.

Of the Absolute in the theoretical sense, I do not venture to speak; but this I maintain: that if a man recognises it in its manifestation, and always keeps his gaze fixed upon it, he will experience very great reward.

To live in a great idea means to treat the impossible as though it were possible. It is just the same with a strong character; and when an idea and a character meet, things arise which fill the world with wonder for thousands of years.

Man is placed as a real being in the midst of a real world, and endowed with such organs that he can perceive and produce the real and also the possible.

To the several perversities of the day a man should always oppose only the great masses of universal history.

No one can live much with children without finding that they always react to any outward influence upon them.

With any specially childish nature the reaction is even passionate, while its action is energetic.

That is why children’s lives are a series of refined judgments, not to say prejudices; and to efface a rapid but partial perception in order to make way for a more general one, time is necessary. To bear this in mind is one of the teacher’s greatest duties.

In the world people take a man at his own estimate; but he must estimate himself at something. Disagreeableness is more easily tolerated than insignificance.

You can force anything on society so long as it has no sequel.

We do not learn to know men if they come to us; we must go to them to find out what they are.

What we call conduct and good manners obtains for us that which otherwise is to be obtained only by force, or not even by force.

How can the character, the peculiar nature of a man, be compatible with good manners?

It is through his good manners that a man’s peculiar nature should be made all the more conspicuous. Every one likes distinction, but it should not be disagreeable.

The most privileged position, in life as in society, is that of an educated soldier. Rough warriors, at any rate, remain true to their character, and as great strength is usually the cover for good nature, we get on with them at need.

No one is more troublesome than an awkward civilian. As his business is not with anything brutal or coarse, he might be expected to show delicacy of feeling.

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.

A familiar in the place of a respectful demeanour is always ridiculous.

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.

A man’s manners are the mirror in which he shows his portrait.

There is a politeness of the heart, and it is allied to love. It produces the most agreeable politeness of outward demeanour.

Voluntary dependence is the best state, and how should that be possible without love?

We are never further from our wishes than when we fancy we possess the object of them.

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.

Against the great superiority of another there is no remedy but love.

It is a terrible thing for an eminent man to be gloried in by fools.

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.

There is no greater consolation for mediocrity than that the genius is not immortal.

The greatest men are linked to their age by some weak point.

We generally take men to be more dangerous than they are.

Fools and wise folk are alike harmless. It is the half-wise, and the half-foolish, who are the most dangerous.

To see a difficult thing lightly handled gives us the impression of the impossible.

Difficulties increase the nearer we come to our aim.

Sowing is not so painful as reaping.

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.

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.

A man may live never so retired a life but he becomes a debtor or a creditor before he is aware of it.

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!

To communicate oneself is Nature; to receive a communication as it is given is Culture.

No one would speak much in society if he were aware how often we misunderstand others.

It is only because we have not understood a thing that we cannot repeat it without alteration.

To make a long speech in the presence of others without flattering your audience, is to rouse dislike.

Every word that we utter rouses its contrary.

Contradiction and flattery make, both of them, bad conversation.

The pleasantest society is that in which there exists a genial deference amongst the members one towards another.

By nothing do men show their character more than by the things they laugh at.

The ridiculous springs from a moral contrast innocently presented to the senses.

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.

An intelligent man finds almost everything ridiculous, a wise man hardly anything.

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.

Certain faults are necessary to the individual if he is to exist. We should not like old friends to give up certain peculiarities.

It is said of a man that he will soon die, when he acts in any way unlike himself.

What kind of faults in ourselves should we retain, nay, even cultivate? Those which rather flatter other people than offend them.

The passions are good or bad qualities, only intensified.

Our passions are, in truth, like the phoenix. When the old one burns away, the new one rises out of its ashes at once.

Great passions are hopeless diseases. That which could cure them is the first thing to make them really dangerous.

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.

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.

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.

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.

It would not be worth while to see seventy years if all the wisdom of this world were foolishness with God.

The true is Godlike: we do not see it itself; we must guess at it through its manifestations.

The real scholar learns how to evolve the unknown from the known, and draws near the master.

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.

What belongs to a man, he cannot get rid of, even though he throws it away.

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.

As a coal is revived by incense, so prayer revives the hopes of the heart.

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.

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.

As we grow older, the ordeals grow greater.

Where I cannot be moral, my power is gone.

A man is not deceived by others, he deceives himself.

It is not the intelligent man who rules, but intelligence; not the wise man, but wisdom.

To praise a man is to put oneself on his level.

It is not enough to know, we must also apply; it is not enough to will, we must also do.

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.

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.

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.

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.

The greatest difficulties lie where we do not look for them.

Our interest in public events is mostly the merest philistinism.

Nothing is more highly to be prized than the value of each day.

Strictly speaking, everything depends upon a man’s intentions; where these exist, thoughts appear; and as the intentions are, so are the thoughts.

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.

The first and last thing that is required of genius is love of truth.

To be and remain true to oneself and others, is to possess the noblest attribute of the greatest talents.

Great talents are the best means of conciliation.

The action of genius is in a way ubiquitous: towards general truths before experience, and towards particular truths after it.

An active scepticism is one which constantly aims at overcoming itself, and arriving by means of regulated experience at a kind of conditioned certainty.

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.

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.

Perfection is the measure of heaven, and the wish to be perfect the measure of man.

Not only what is born with him, but also what he acquires, makes the man.

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.

The senses do not deceive; it is the judgment that deceives.

The lower animal is taught by its organs; man teaches his organs, and dominates them.

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.

Every idea appears at first as a strange visitor, and when it begins to be realised, it is hardly distinguishable from phantasy and phantastery.

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.

You may recognise the utility of an idea, and yet not quite understand how to make a perfect use of it.

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.

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.

What is predestination? It is this: God is mightier and wiser than we are, and so he does with us as he pleases.

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.

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.

I stumbled over the roots of the tree which I planted.’ It must have been an old forester who said that.

A leaf blown by the wind often looks like a bird.

Does the sparrow know how the stork feels?

Lamps make oil-spots, and candles want snuffing; it is only the light of heaven that shines pure and leaves no stain.

If you miss the first button-hole, you will not succeed in buttoning up your coat.

A burnt child dreads the fire; an old man who has often been singed is afraid of warming himself.

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.

Let every man ask himself with which of his faculties he can and will somehow influence his age.

Let no one think that people have waited for him as for the Saviour.

Character in matters great and small consists in a man steadily pursuing the things of which he feels himself capable.

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.

There are men who put their knowledge in the place of insight.

There is no sadder sight than the direct striving after the unconditioned in this thoroughly conditioned world.

Before the Revolution it was all effort; afterwards it all changed to demand.

Vanity is a desire of personal glory, the wish to be appreciated, honoured, and run after, not because of one’s personal qualities, merits, and achievements, but because of one’s individual existence. At best, therefore, it is a frivolous beauty whom it befits.

Both what is reasonable and what is unreasonable have to undergo the like contradiction.

Dialectic is the culture of the spirit of contradiction, which is given to man that he may learn to perceive the differences between things.

With those who are really of like disposition with himself a man cannot long be at variance; he will always come to an agreement again. With those who are really of adverse disposition, he may in vain try to preserve harmony; he will always come to a separation again.

Opponents fancy they refute us when they repeat their own opinion and pay no attention to ours.

People who contradict and dispute should now and then remember that not every mode of speech is intelligible to every one.

Every man hears only what he understands.

I am quite prepared to find that many a reader will disagree with me; but when he has a thing before him in black and white, he must let it stand. Another reader may perhaps take up the very same copy and agree with me.

The truest liberality is appreciation.

For the strenuous man the difficulty is to recognise the merits of elder contemporaries and not let himself be hindered by their defects.

Some men think about the defects of their friends, and there is nothing to be gained by it. I have always paid attention to the merits of my enemies, and found it an advantage.

There are many men who fancy they understand whatever they experience.

When a man grows old he must consciously remain at a certain stage.

It does not become an old man to run after the fashion, either in thought or in dress. But he must know where he is, and what the others are aiming at.

The thinker makes a great mistake when he asks after cause and effect: they both together make up the indivisible phenomenon.

All practical men try to bring the world under their hands; all thinkers, under their heads. How far each succeeds, they may both see for themselves.

Shall we say that a man thinks only when he cannot think out that of which he is thinking?

What is invention or discovery? It is the conclusion of what we were looking for.

Every phenomenon is within our reach if we treat it as an inclined plane, which is of easy ascent, though the thick end of the wedge may be steep and inaccessible.

If a man would enter upon some course of knowledge, he must either be deceived or deceive himself, unless external necessity irresistibly determines him. Who would become a physician if, at one and the same time, he saw before him all the horrible sights that await him?

How many years must a man do nothing before he can at all know what is to be done and how to do it!

Duty: where a man loves what he commands himself to do.

Literature is a fragment of fragments: the least of what happened and was spoken, has been written; and of the things that have been written, very few have been preserved.

And yet, with all the fragmentary nature of literature, we find thousand fold repetition; which shows how limited is man’s mind and destiny.

Excellent work is unfathomable, approach it as you will.

The appeal to posterity springs from the pure, strong feeling of the existence of something imperishable; something that, even though it be not at once recognised, will in the end be gratified by finding the minority turn into a majority.

When a new literature succeeds, it obscures the effect of an earlier one, and its own effect predominates; so that it is well, from time to time, to look back. What is original in us is best preserved and quickened if we do not lose sight of those who have gone before us.

The most original authors of modern times are so, not because they produce what is new, but only because they are able to say things the like of which seem never to have been said before.

Thus the best sign of originality lies in taking up a subject and then developing it so fully as to make every one confess that he would hardly have found so much in it.

There are many thoughts that come only from general culture, like buds from green branches. When roses bloom, you see them blooming everywhere.

Lucidity is a due distribution of light and shade.’ Hamann.

A man who has no acquaintance with foreign languages knows nothing of his own.

We must remember that there are many men who, without being productive, are anxious to say something important, and the results are most curious.

Deep and earnest thinkers are in a difficult position with regard to the public.

Some books seem to have been written, not to teach us anything, but to let us know that the author has known something.

An author can show no greater respect for his public than by never bringing it what it expects, but what he himself thinks right and proper in that stage of his own and others’ culture in which for the time he finds himself.

The so-called Nature-poets are men of active talent, with a fresh stimulus and reaction from an over-cultured, stagnant, mannered epoch of art. They cannot avoid commonplace.

Productions are now possible which, without being bad, have no value. They have no value, because they contain nothing; and they are not bad, because a general form of good-workmanship is present to the author’s mind.

All lyrical work must, as a whole, be perfectly intelligible, but in some particulars a little unintelligible.

A romance is a subjective epic in which the author begs leave to treat the world after his own ideas. The only question is, whether he has any ideas; the rest will follow of itself.

Superstition is the poetry of life, and so it does not hurt the poet to be superstitious.

That glorious hymn, Veni Creator Spiritus, is really an appeal to genius. That is why it speaks so powerfully to men of intellect and power.

Translators are like busy match-makers: they sing the praises of some half-veiled beauty, and extol her charms, and arouse an irresistible longing for the original.

A Spinoza in poetry becomes a Machiavelli in philosophy.

Against the three unities there is nothing to be said, if the subject is very simple; but there are times when thrice three unities, skilfully interwoven, produce a very pleasant effect.

The sentimentality of the English is humorous and tender; of the French, popular and pathetic; of the Germans, naïve and realistic.

Mysticism is the scholastic of the heart, the dialectic of the feelings.

If a man sets out to reproach an author with obscurity, he should first of all examine his own mind, to see if he is himself all clearness within. Twilight makes even plain writing illegible.

My relations with Schiller rested on the decided tendency of both of us towards a single aim, and our common activity rested on the diversity of the means by which we endeavoured to attain that aim.

There may be eclectic philosophers, but not an eclectic philosophy.

But every one is an eclectic who, out of the things that surround and take place about him, appropriates what is suited to his nature; and this is what is meant by culture and progress, in matters of theory or practice.

Various maxims of the ancients, which we are wont to repeat again and again, had a meaning quite different from that which is apt to attach to them in later times.

The saying that no one who is unacquainted with or a stranger to geometry should enter the philosopher’s school, does not mean that a man must become a mathematician to attain the wisdom of the world.

Geometry is here taken in its primary elements, such as are contained in Euclid and laid before every beginner; and then it is the most perfect propædeutic and introduction to philosophy.

Let us remember how great the ancients were; and especially how the Socratic school holds up to us the source and standard of all life and action, and bids us not indulge in empty speculation, but live and do.

So long as our scholastic education takes us back to antiquity and furthers the study of the Greek and Latin languages, we may congratulate ourselves that these studies, so necessary for the higher culture, will never disappear.

If we set our gaze on antiquity and earnestly study it, in the desire to form ourselves thereon, we get the feeling as if it were only then that we really became men.

The pedagogue, in trying to write and speak Latin, has a higher and grander idea of himself than would be permissible in ordinary life.

Poetical talent is given to peasant as well as to knight; all that is required is that each shall grasp his position and treat it worthily.

An historic sense means a sense so cultured that, in valuing the deserts and merits of its own time, it takes account also of the past.

The best that history gives us is the enthusiasm it arouses.

The historian’s duty is to separate the true from the false, the certain from the uncertain, and the doubtful from that which cannot be accepted.

It is seldom that any one of great age becomes historical to himself, and finds his contemporaries become historical to him, so that he neither cares nor is able to argue with any one.

We really learn only from those books which we cannot criticise. The author of a book which we could criticise would have to learn from us.

That is the reason why the Bible will never lose its power; because, as long as the world lasts, no one can stand up and say: I grasp it as a whole and understand all the parts of it. But we say humbly: as a whole it is worthy of respect, and in all its parts it is applicable.

There is and will be much discussion as to the use and harm of circulating the Bible. One thing is clear to me: mischief will result, as heretofore, by using it phantastically as a system of dogma; benefit, as heretofore, by a loving acceptance of its teachings.

The incurable evil of religious controversy is that while one party wants to connect the highest interest of humanity with fables and phrases, the other tries to rest it on things that satisfy no one.

If one has not read the newspapers for some months and then reads them all together, one sees, as one never saw before, how much time is wasted with this kind of literature.

The classical is health; and the romantic, disease.

Ovid remained classical even in exile: it is not in himself that he sees misfortune, but in his banishment from the metropolis of the world.

The romantic is already fallen into its own abysm. It is hard to imagine anything more degraded than the worst of the new productions.

Bodies which rot while they are still alive, and are edified by the detailed contemplation of their own decay; dead men who remain in the world for the ruin of others, and feed their death on the living,—to this have come our makers of literature.

Literature decays only as men become more and more corrupt.

What a day it is when we must envy the men in their graves!

The Greeks, whose poetry and rhetoric was of a simple and positive character, express approval more often than disapproval. With the Latin writers it is the contrary; and the more poetry and the arts of speech decay, the more will blame swell and praise shrink.

What are tragedies but the versified passions of people who make Heaven knows what out of the external world?

There are certain empirical enthusiasts who are quite right in showing their enthusiasm over new productions that are good; but they are as ecstatic as if there were no other good work in the world at all.

In Sakontala the poet appears in his highest function. As the representative of the most natural condition of things, the finest mode of life, the purest moral endeavour, the worthiest majesty, and the most solemn worship, he ventures on common and ridiculous contrasts.

Shakespeare’s Henry IV. If everything were lost that has ever been preserved to us of this kind of writing, the arts of poetry and rhetoric could be completely restored out of this one play.

Shakespeare’s finest dramas are wanting here and there in facility: they are something more than they should be, and for that very reason indicate the great poet.

Shakespeare is dangerous reading for budding talents: he compels them to reproduce him, and they fancy they are producing themselves.

Yorick Sterne was the finest spirit that ever worked. To read him is to attain a fine feeling of freedom; his humour is inimitable, and it is not every kind of humour that frees the soul.

The peculiar value of so-called popular ballads is that their motives are drawn direct from nature. This, however, is an advantage of which the poet of culture could also avail himself, if he knew how to do it.

But in popular ballads there is always this advantage, that in the art of saying things shortly uneducated men are always better skilled than those who are in the strict sense of the word educated.

Gemüth = Heart. The translator must proceed until he reaches the untranslatable; and then only will he have an idea of the foreign nation and the foreign tongue.

When we say of a landscape that it has a romantic character, it is the secret feeling of the sublime taking the form of the past, or, what is the same thing, of solitude, absence, or seclusion.

The Beautiful is a manifestation of secret laws of nature, which, without its presence, would never have been revealed.

It is said: Artist, study nature! But it is no trifle to develop the noble out of the commonplace, or beauty out of uniformity.

When Nature begins to reveal her open secret to a man, he feels an irresistible longing for her worthiest interpreter, Art.

For all other Arts we must make some allowance; but to Greek Art alone we are always debtors.

There is no surer way of evading the world than by Art; and no surer way of uniting with it than by Art.

Even in the moments of highest happiness and deepest misery we need the Artist.

False tendencies of the senses are a kind of desire after realism, always better than that false tendency which expresses itself as idealistic longing.

The dignity of Art appears perhaps most conspicuously in Music; for in Music there is no material to be deducted. It is wholly form and intrinsic value, and it raises and ennobles all that it expresses.

It is only by Art, and especially by Poetry, that the imagination is regulated. Nothing is more frightful than imagination without taste.

Art rests upon a kind of religious sense: it is deeply and ineradicably in earnest. Thus it is that Art so willingly goes hand in hand with Religion.

A noble philosopher spoke of architecture as frozen music; and it was inevitable that many people should shake their heads over his remark. We believe that no better repetition of this fine thought can be given than by calling architecture a speechless music.

Art is essentially noble; therefore the artist has nothing to fear from a low or common subject. Nay, by taking it up, he ennobles it; and so it is that we see the greatest artists boldly exercising their sovereign rights.

In every artist there is a germ of daring, without which no talent is conceivable.

Art is a medium of what no tongue can utter; and thus it seems a piece of folly to try to convey its meaning afresh by means of words. But, by trying to do so, the understanding gains; and this, again, benefits the faculty in practice.

An artist who produces valuable work is not always able to give an account of his own or others’ performances.

We know of no world except in relation to mankind; and we wish for no Art that does not bear the mark of this relation.

Higher aims are in themselves more valuable, even if unfulfilled, than lower ones quite attained.

Blunt naïvety, stubborn vigour, scrupulous observance of rule, and any other epithets which may apply to older German Art, are a part of every earlier and simpler artistic method. The older Venetians, Florentines, and others had it all too.

Because Albrecht Dürer, with his incomparable talent, could never rise to the idea of the symmetry of beauty, or even to the thought of a fitting conformity to the object in view, are we never to spurn the ground!

Albrecht Dürer had the advantage of a very profound realistic perception, an affectionate human sympathy with all present conditions. He was kept back by a gloomy phantasy, devoid both of form and foundation.

It would be interesting to show how Martin Schön stands near him, and how the merits of German Art were restricted to these two; and useful also to show that it was not evening every day.

In every Italian school the butterfly breaks loose from the chrysalis.

After Klopstock released us from rhyme, and Voss gave us models of prose, are we to make doggerel again like Hans Sachs?

Let us be many-sided! Turnips are good, but they are best mixed with chestnuts. And these two noble products of the earth grow far apart.

In every kind of Art there is a degree of excellence which may be reached, so to speak, by the mere use of one’s own natural talents. But at the same time it is impossible to go beyond that point, unless Art comes to one’s aid.

In the presence of Nature even moderate talent is always possessed of insight; hence drawings from Nature that are at all carefully done always give pleasure.

To make many sketches issue at last in a complete work is something that not even the best artists always achieve.

In the sphere of true Art there is no preparatory school, but there is a way of preparation; and the best preparation is the interest of the most insignificant pupil in the work of the master. Colour-grinders have often made excellent painters.

If an artist grasps Nature aright and contrives to give its form a nobler, freer grace, no one will understand the source of his inspiration, and every one will swear that he has taken it from the antique.

In studying the human form, let the painter reject what is exaggerated, false, and mechanical; but let him learn to grasp of what infinite grace the human body is capable.

Kant taught us the critique of the reason. We must have a critique of the senses if Art in general, and especially German Art, is ever to regain its tone and move forward on the path of life and happiness.