Maxims and Reflections by Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
Translator’s Preface
(xiv) We are not born, as he said to Eckermann, to solve the problems of the world, but to find out where the problem begins, and then to keep within the limits of what we can grasp. The problem, he urges is transformed into a postulate: if we cannot get a solution theoretically, we can get it in the experience of practical life.
… Before the French Revolution it was all effort; afterwards it all changed to demand.
(5) When a man is old he must do more than when he was young.
(7) … there is no more terrible sight than ignorance in action.
(15) The wise have much in common with one another. Aeschylus
(19) We all live on the past, and through the past are destroyed.
(21) The world is a bell with a crack in it; it rattles, but does not ring.
NB: Leonard Cohen: everything has a crack in it, that’s how the light gets in
… 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.
(23) 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.
(24) We readily bow to antiquity, but not to posterity. It is only a father that does not grudge talent to his son.
… Hope is the second soul of the unhappy.
(25) Mastery often passes for egoism.
(27) 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.
(28) Which is the best government? That which teaches us to govern ourselves.
… When men have to do with women, they get spun off like a distaff.
… Nothing is more terrible than ignorance in action.
(31) To grow old is itself to enter upon a new business; all the circumstances change, and a man must either cease acting altogether, or willingly and consciously take over the new role.
(37) 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.
… Fools and wise folk are alike harmless. it is the half-wise, and the half-foolish, who are the most dangerous.
… Difficulties increase the nearer we come to our aim.
(38) Sowing is not as painful as reaping.
NB: Harvesting is hard work.
… Every word that we utter rouses its contrary.
NB: Goethe’s linguistic codicil to Newton’s Law, Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle, and Goedel’s Theorem
(39) By nothing do men show their character more than by the things they laugh at.
… An intelligent man finds almost everything ridiculous, a wise man hardly anything.
… 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.”
(42) 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.
…. As we grow older, the ordeals grow greater.
(43) The greatest difficulties lie where we do not look for them.
(48) Character in matters great and small consists in a man steadily pursuing the things of which he feels himself capable.
(62) 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 tougue.
(68-69) We more readily confess to errors, mistakes, and shortcomings in our conduct than in our thought. And the reason of it is that conscience is humble and even takes a pleasure in being ashamed. But the intellect is proud, and if forced to recant is driven to despair.
(71) To a new truth there is nothing more hurtful than an old error.
(74) There is so much cryptogamy in phanerogamy that centuries will not decipher it.
cryptogamy
phanerogamy
…. What a true saying it is that he who wants to deceive mankind must before all things make absurdity plausible.
(75) The discerning man who acknowledges his limitiations is not far off perfection.
… What friends do with us and for us is a real part of our life; for it strengthens and advances our personality. The assault of our enemies is not part of our life; it is only part of our experience; we throw it off and guard ourselves against it as against frost, storm, rain, hail, or any other of the external evils which may be expected to happen.
… A man cannot live with every one, and therfore he cannot live for every one. To see this truth aright is to place a high value upon one’s friends, and not to hate or persecute one’s enemies. Nay, there is hardly any greater advantage for a man to gain than to find out, if he can, the merits of his opponents: it gives him a decided ascendency over them.
(78) Everything she [Nature] gives is found to be good, for first of all she makes it indispensable. She lingers, that we may long for presence; she hurries by, that we may not grow weary of her.
