Maxims and Reflections of Goethe
There is nothing worth thinking but has been thought before; we must only try thinking it again.
Our endeavor must be to strive until our personality attains entelechy—it’s full development.
A man is only happy when he delights in the goodwill of others.
Love what you command yourself to do.
Generosity wins favor for every one, especially when it is accompanied by modesty.
He is the happiest man who can set the end of his life in connection with the beginning.
What does this mean? - Creation?
One need only grow old to become gentler in one’s judgements. I see no fault committed which I could not have committed myself.
There is something magical in rhythm; it even makes us believe that we possess the sublime.
Speak things that cannot be pictures, and draw a picture of things that cannot be spoken. When you try to speak something that could be drawn, you start down the path of symbolic incomprehensibility.
Wow:
You will always have to pay for your humanity.
Apart from this real world there is a world of illusion, a more potent world where most men live.
This is the same as the population of statues in Rome that isn’t counted in the census, but is a very real part of Roman life. Try to learn about this world when you meet others, it’s the story they tell themself. Partly even the patterns they’ve repeated since childhood.
Speak what cannot be pictured, and draw a picture of what cannot be spoken. If you use words when a picture will do, you will start on the path of being incomprehensible.
No one is the master of any truly productive energy; and all men must let it work on by itself.
Error is related to truth as sleep is to waking.
It is only because we have not yet understood a thing that we can repeat it without alteration.
It should be our earnest endeavor to use coinciding as closely as possible with what we feel, see, feel, think, experience, imagine, and reason. We must daily renew this. Observe and communicate about the world as it is to allow true ideas to find their place.
As we grow older, the ordeals grow greater.
Not only what is born with him, but also what he acquires, makes the man.
This ties to the idea of institutions vs. geography. It is the institutions that make us successful, as well as those which we control, which makes them more virtuous a pursuit.
Duty is where a man loves what he commands himself to do.
Nature has divided herself so that she may be her own delight. Follow her confidence and delight yourself insatiably with new creatures forever springing up.
Nature loves movement, that’s why every want once satisfied is soon growing again.
Is this wisdom?
Raw matter is seen by every one, the contents are found only by those with eyes, and the form is a secret to the majority.
An old man loses one of the greatest human privileges: he is no more judged by his peers.
True productive friendship consists in my friend approving my aims while I approve his, and in thus moving forwards together, however much our way of thought and life may vary.
It is said of a man that he will soon die, when he acts in any way unlike himself.
It is not the intelligent man who rules, but intelligence; not the wise man, but wisdom.
This makes it less personal - ?