Maxims and Reflections
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.
355
What is predestination? It is this: God is mightier and wiser than we
are, and so he does with us as he pleases.
356
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.
357
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.
358
'I stumbled over the roots of the tree which I planted.' It must have
been an old forester who said that.
359
A leaf blown by the wind often looks like a bird.
360
Does the sparrow know how the stork feels?
361
Lamps make oil-spots, and candles want snuffing; it is only the light of
heaven that shines pure and leaves no stain.
362
If you miss the first button-hole, you will not succeed in buttoning up
your coat.
363
A burnt child dreads the fire; an old man who has often been singed is
afraid of warming himself.
364
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.
365
Let every man ask himself with which of his faculties he can and will
somehow influence his age.
366
Let no one think that people have waited for him as for the Saviour.
367
Character in matters great and small consists in a man steadily pursuing
the things of which he feels himself capable.
368
The man who wants to be active and has to be so, need only think of what
is fitting at the moment, and he will make his way without difficulty.
This is where women have the advantage, if they understand it.
369
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.
370
There are men who put their knowledge in the place of insight.
371
In some states, as a consequence of the violent movements experienced in
almost all directions, there has come about a certain overpressure in
the system of education, the harm of which will be more generally felt
hereafter; though even now it is perfectly well recognised by capable
and honest authorities. Capable men live in a sort of despair over the
fact that they are bound by the rules of their office to teach and
communicate things which they look upon as useless and hurtful.
372
There is no sadder sight than the direct striving after the
unconditioned in this thoroughly conditioned world.
373
Before the Revolution it was all _effort_; afterwards it all changed to
_demand_.
374
Can a nation become ripe? That is a strange question. I would answer,
Yes! if all the men could be born thirty years of age. But as youth will
always be too forward and old age too backward, the really mature man is
always hemmed in between them, and has to resort to strange devices to
make his way through.
375
It does not look well for monarchs to speak through the press, for power
should act and not talk. The projects of the liberal party always bear
being read: the man who is overpowered may at least express his views in
speech, because he cannot act. When Mazarin was shown some satirical
songs on a new tax, 'Let them sing,' said he, 'as long as they pay.'
376
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.
377
The most important matters of feeling as of reason, of experience as of
reflection, should be treated of only by word of mouth. The spoken word
at once dies if it is not kept alive by some other word following on it
and suited to the hearer. Observe what happens in social converse. If
the word is not dead when it reaches the hearer, he murders it at once
by a contradiction, a stipulation, a condition, a digression, an
interruption, and all the thousand tricks of conversation. With the
written word the case is still worse. No one cares to read anything to
which he is not already to some extent accustomed: he demands the known
and the familiar under an altered form. Still the written word has this
advantage, that it lasts and can await the time when it is allowed to
take effect.
378
Both what is reasonable and what is unreasonable have to undergo the
like contradiction.
379
Dialectic is the culture of the spirit of contradiction, which is given
to man that he may learn to perceive the differences between things.
380
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.
381
Opponents fancy they refute us when they repeat their own opinion and
pay no attention to ours.
382
People who contradict and dispute should now and then remember that not
every mode of speech is intelligible to every one.
383
Every man hears only what he understands.
384
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.
385
The truest liberality is appreciation.
386
For the strenuous man the difficulty is to recognise the merits of elder
contemporaries and not let himself be hindered by their defects.
387
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.
388
There are many men who fancy they understand whatever they experience.
389
The public must be treated like women: they must be told absolutely
nothing but what they like to hear.
390
Every age of man has a certain philosophy answering to it. The child
comes out as a realist: he finds himself as convinced that pears and
apples exist as that he himself exists. The youth in a storm of inner
passion is forced to turn his gaze within, and feel in advance what he
is going to be: he is changed into an idealist. But the man has every
reason to become a sceptic: he does well to doubt whether the means he
has chosen to his end are the right ones. Before and during action he
has every reason for keeping his understanding mobile, that he may not
afterwards have to grieve over a false choice. Yet when he grows old he
will always confess himself a mystic: he sees that so much seems to
depend on chance; that folly succeeds and wisdom fails; that good and
evil fortune are brought unexpectedly to the same level; so it is and so
it has been, and old age acquiesces in that which is and was and will
be.
391
When a man grows old he must consciously remain at a certain stage.
392
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.
What is called fashion is the tradition of the moment. All tradition
carries with it a certain necessity for people to put themselves on a
level with it.
393
We have long been busy with the critique of reason. I should like to see
a critique of common-sense. It would be a real benefit to mankind if we
could convincingly prove to the ordinary intelligence how far it can go;
and that is just as much as it fully requires for life on this earth.
394
The thinker makes a great mistake when he asks after cause and effect:
they both together make up the indivisible phenomenon.
395
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.
396
Shall we say that a man thinks only when he cannot think out that of
which he is thinking?
397
What is invention or discovery? It is the conclusion of what we were
looking for.
398
It is with history as with nature and with everything of any depth, it
may be past, present, or future: the further we seriously pursue it, the
more difficult are the problems that appear. The man who is not afraid
of them, but attacks them bravely, has a feeling of higher culture and
greater ease the further he progresses.
399
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.
400
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?
401
How many years must a man do nothing before he can at all know what is
to be done and how to do it!
402
Duty: where a man loves what he commands himself to do.
LITERATURE AND ART
403
When Madame Roland was on the scaffold, she asked for pen and paper, to
note the peculiar thoughts that hovered about her on the last journey.
It is a pity they were refused, for in a tranquil mind thoughts rise up
at the close of life hitherto unthinkable; like blessed inward voices,
alighting in glory on the summits of the past.
404
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.
405
And yet, with all the fragmentary nature of literature, we find thousand
fold repetition; which shows how limited is man's mind and destiny.
406
Excellent work is unfathomable, approach it as you will.
407
It is not language in itself which is correct or forcible or elegant,
but the mind that is embodied in it; and so it is not for a man to
determine whether he will give his calculations or speeches or poems the
desired qualities: the question is whether Nature has given him the
intellectual and moral qualities which fit him for the work,--the
intellectual power of observation and insight, the moral power of
repelling the evil spirits that might hinder him from paying respect to
truth.
408
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.
409
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.
410
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.
411
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.
412
There are many thoughts that come only from general culture, like buds