Maxims and Reflections
Fools and wise folk are alike harmless. It is the half-wise, and the
half-foolish, who are the most dangerous.
277
To see a difficult thing lightly handled gives us the impression of the
impossible.
278
Difficulties increase the nearer we come to our aim.
279
Sowing is not so painful as reaping.
280
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.
281
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.
282
A man may live never so retired a life but he becomes a debtor or a
creditor before he is aware of it.
283
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!
284
To communicate oneself is Nature; to receive a communication as it is
given is Culture.
285
No one would speak much in society if he were aware how often we
misunderstand others.
286
It is only because we have not understood a thing that we cannot repeat
it without alteration.
287
To make a long speech in the presence of others without flattering your
audience, is to rouse dislike.
288
Every word that we utter rouses its contrary.
289
Contradiction and flattery make, both of them, bad conversation.
290
The pleasantest society is that in which there exists a genial deference
amongst the members one towards another.
291
By nothing do men show their character more than by the things they
laugh at.
292
The ridiculous springs from a moral contrast innocently presented to the
senses.
293
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.
294
An intelligent man finds almost everything ridiculous, a wise man hardly
anything.
295
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.'
296
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.
297
Certain faults are necessary to the individual if he is to exist. We
should not like old friends to give up certain peculiarities.
298
It is said of a man that he will soon die, when he acts in any way
unlike himself.
299
What kind of faults in ourselves should we retain, nay, even cultivate?
Those which rather flatter other people than offend them.
300
The passions are good or bad qualities, only intensified.
301
Our passions are, in truth, like the phoenix. When the old one burns
away, the new one rises out of its ashes at once.
302
Great passions are hopeless diseases. That which could cure them is the
first thing to make them really dangerous.
303
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.
304
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.
305
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.
VI
306
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.
307
It would not be worth while to see seventy years if all the wisdom of
this world were foolishness with God.
308
The true is Godlike: we do not see it itself; we must guess at it
through its manifestations.
309
The real scholar learns how to evolve the unknown from the known, and
draws near the master.
310
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.
311
What belongs to a man, he cannot get rid of, even though he throws it
away.
312
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.
313
It is undeniable that in the Reformation the human mind tried to free
itself; and the renaissance of Greek and Roman antiquity brought about
the wish and longing for a freer, more seemly, and elegant life. The
movement was favoured in no small degree by the fact that men's hearts
aimed at returning to a certain simple state of nature, while the
imagination sought to concentrate itself.
314
The Saints were all at once driven from heaven; and senses, thought, and
heart were turned from a divine mother with a tender child, to the grown
man doing good and suffering evil, who was later transfigured into a
being half-divine in its nature, and then recognised and honoured as God
himself. He stood against a background where the Creator had opened out
the universe; a spiritual influence went out from him; his sufferings
were adopted as an example, and his transfiguration was the pledge of
everlastingness.
315
As a coal is revived by incense, so prayer revives the hopes of the
heart.
316
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.
317
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.
Let every man examine himself, and he will find this a much harder task
than he might suppose; for, unhappily, a man usually takes words as mere
make-shifts; his knowledge and his thought are in most cases better
than his method of expression.
False, irrelevant, and futile ideas may arise in ourselves and others,
or find their way into us from without. Let us persist in the effort to
remove them as far as we can, by plain and honest purpose.
318
As we grow older, the ordeals grow greater.
319
Where I cannot be moral, my power is gone.
320
A man is not deceived by others, he deceives himself.
321
Laws are all made by old people and by men. Youths and women want the
exceptions, old people the rules.
322
It is not the intelligent man who rules, but intelligence; not the wise
man, but wisdom.
323
To praise a man is to put oneself on his level.
324
It is not enough to know, we must also apply; it is not enough to will,
we must also do.
325
Chinese, Indian, and Egyptian antiquities are never more than
curiosities; it is well to make acquaintance with them; but in point of
moral and æsthetic culture they can help us little.
326
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.
327
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.
Yet still the attempt may have its advantage, as otherwise we should
break off our researches too soon.
328
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.
329
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.
330
The greatest difficulties lie where we do not look for them.
331
Our interest in public events is mostly the merest philistinism.
332
Nothing is more highly to be prized than the value of each day.
333
_Pereant qui ante nos nostra dixerunt!_ This is so strange an utterance,
that it could only have come from one who fancied himself autochthonous.
The man who looks upon it as an honour to be descended from wise
ancestors, will allow them at least as much common-sense as he allows
himself.
334
Strictly speaking, everything depends upon a man's intentions; where
these exist, thoughts appear; and as the intentions are, so are the
thoughts.
335
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.
VII
336
The first and last thing that is required of genius is love of truth.
337
To be and remain true to oneself and others, is to possess the noblest
attribute of the greatest talents.
338
Great talents are the best means of conciliation.
339
The action of genius is in a way ubiquitous: towards general truths
before experience, and towards particular truths after it.
340
An active scepticism is one which constantly aims at overcoming itself,
and arriving by means of regulated experience at a kind of conditioned
certainty.
341
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.
342
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.
343
Perfection is the measure of heaven, and the wish to be perfect the
measure of man.
344
Not only what is born with him, but also what he acquires, makes the
man.
345
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.
346
The senses do not deceive; it is the judgment that deceives.
347
The lower animal is taught by its organs; man teaches his organs, and
dominates them.
348
All direct invitation to live up to ideals is of doubtful value,
particularly if addressed to women. Whatever the reason of it may be, a
man of any importance collects round him a seraglio of a more or less
religious, moral, and æsthetic character.
349
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.
350
Every idea appears at first as a strange visitor, and when it begins to
be realised, it is hardly distinguishable from phantasy and phantastery.
351
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.
352
You may recognise the utility of an idea, and yet not quite understand
how to make a perfect use of it.
353
_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.
354