Where/Goethe
Talk teasers:
from Goethe's Maxims
Here's a thought. Consider it. If you find parts that make no sense, try to make sense of them. Look things up. Understand the passage. Then tell yourself and others what you think in response. If that's, "Eh....," that's fine, pass over it — the world holds many thoughts. If you have a response, great! and if you have a little time, others may be interested if you explain it in the comment box.
From Goethe's Maxim's and reflections
[¶8:] 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.
[¶11:] 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.
[¶14:] 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.
[¶17:] 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.
[¶18:] The most insignificant man can be complete if he works within the limits of his capacities, innate or acquired; but even fine talents can be obscured, neutralised, and destroyed by lack of this indispensable requirement of symmetry. This is a mischief which will often occur in modern times; for who will be able to come up to the claims of an age so full and intense as this, and one too that moves so rapidly?
[¶22:] 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?
[¶24:] As little as you can stifle a steam-engine, so little can you do this in the moral sphere either. The activity of commerce, the rush and rustle of paper-money, the swelling-up of debts to pay debts—all these are the monstrous elements to which in these days a young man is exposed. Well is it for him if he is gifted by nature with a sober, quiet temperament; neither to make claims on the world out of all proportion to his position, nor yet let the world determine it.
[¶28:] Love of truth shows itself in this, that a man knows how to find and value the good in everything.
[¶31:] 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.
[¶33:] Everything that frees our spirit without giving us control of ourselves is ruinous.
[¶43:] Whoso is content with pure experience and acts upon it has enough of truth. The growing child is wise in this sense.
Source
- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832) • Maxims and reflections (1833, New edition. Thomas Bailey Saunders, trans., New York: Macmillan and co., 1906. Digitization by Project Gutenberg.)