Maxims and Reflections
nearest and most necessary. But if they rise and pass beyond the sphere
of ordinary wants, common-sense is no longer sufficient; it is a genius
no more, and humanity enters on the region of error.
50
There is no piece of foolishness but it can be corrected by intelligence
or accident; no piece of wisdom but it can miscarry by lack of
intelligence or by accident.
51
Every great idea is a tyrant when it first appears; hence the advantages
which it produces change all too quickly into disadvantages. It is
possible, then, to defend and praise any institution that exists, if its
beginnings are brought to remembrance, and it is shown that everything
which was true of it at the beginning is true of it still.
52
Lessing, who chafed under the sense of various limitations, makes one of
his characters say: No one _must_ do anything. A clever pious man said:
If a man _wills_ something, he must do it. A third, who was, it is true,
an educated man, added: _Will_ follows upon _insight_. The whole circle
of _knowledge, will_, and _necessity_ was thus believed to have been
completed. But, as a rule, a man's knowledge, of whatever kind it may
be, determines what he shall do and what he shall leave undone, and so
it is that there is no more terrible sight than ignorance in action.
53
There are two powers that make for peace: what is right, and what is
fitting.
54
Justice insists on obligation, law on decorum. Justice weighs and
decides, law superintends and orders. Justice refers to the individual,
law to society.
55
The history of knowledge is a great fugue in which the voices of the
nations one after the other emerge.
II
56
If a man is to achieve all that is asked of him, he must take himself
for more than he is, and as long as he does not carry it to an absurd
length, we willingly put up with it.
57
Work makes companionship.
58
People whip curds to see if they cannot make cream of them.
59
It is much easier to put yourself in the position of a mind taken up
with the most absolute error, than of one which mirrors to itself
half-truths.
60
Wisdom lies only in truth.
61
When I err, every one can see it; but not when I lie.
62
Is not the world full enough of riddles already, without our making
riddles too out of the simplest phenomena?
63
'The finest hair throws a shadow.' _Erasmus_.
64
What I have tried to do in my life through false tendencies, I have at
last learned to understand.
65
Generosity wins favour for every one, especially when it is accompanied
by modesty.
66
Before the storm breaks, the dust rises violently for the last time--the
dust that is soon to be laid forever.
67
Men do not come to know one another easily, even with the best will and
the best purpose. And then ill-will comes in and distorts everything.
68
We should know one another better if one man were not so anxious to put
himself on an equality with another.
69
Eminent men are therefore in a worse plight than others; for, as we
cannot compare ourselves with them, we are on the watch for them.
70
In the world the point is, not to know men, but at any given moment to
be cleverer than the man who stands before you. You can prove this at
every fair and from every charlatan.
71
Not everywhere where there is water, are there frogs; but where you have
frogs, there you will find water.
72
Error is quite right as long as we are young, but we must not carry it
on with us into our old age.
Whims and eccentricities that grow stale are all useless, rank nonsense.
73
In the formation of species Nature gets, as it were, into a
_cul-de-sac_; she cannot make her way through, and is disinclined to
turn back. Hence the stubbornness of national character.
74
Every one has something in his nature which, if he were to express it
openly, would of necessity give offence.
75
If a man thinks about his physical or moral condition, he generally
finds that he is ill.
76
Nature asks that a man should sometimes be stupefied without going to
sleep; hence the pleasure in the smoking of tobacco, the drinking of
brandy, the use of opiates.
77
The man who is up and doing should see to it that what he does is right.
Whether or not right is done, is a matter which should not trouble him.
78
Many a man knocks about on the wall with his hammer, and believes that
he hits the right nail on the head every time.
79
Painting and tattooing of the body is a return to animalism.
80
History-writing is a way of getting rid of the past.
81
What a man does not understand, he does not possess.
82
Not every one who has a pregnant thought delivered to him becomes
productive; it probably makes him think of something with which he is
quite familiar.
83
Favour, as a symbol of sovereignty, is exercised by weak men.
84
Every man has enough power left to carry out that of which he is
convinced.
85
Memory may vanish so long as at the moment judgment does not fail you.
86
No nation gains the power of judgment except it can pass judgment on
itself. But to attain this great privilege takes a very long time.
87
Instead of contradicting my words people ought to act in my spirit.
88
Those who oppose intellectual truths do but stir up the fire, and the
cinders fly about and burn what they had else not touched.
89
Man would not be the finest creature in the world if he were not too
fine for it.
90
What a long time people were vainly disputing about the Antipodes!
91
Certain minds must be allowed their peculiarities.
92
Snow is false purity.
93
Whoso shrinks from ideas ends by having nothing but sensations.
94
Those from whom we are always learning are rightly called our masters;
but not every one who teaches us deserves this title.
95
It is with you as with the sea: the most varied names are given to what
is in the end only salt water.
96
It is said that vain self-praise stinks in the nostrils. That may be so;
but for the kind of smell which comes from unjust blame by others the
public has no nose at all.
97
There are problematical natures which are equal to no position in which
they find themselves, and which no position satisfies. This it is that
causes that hideous conflict which wastes life and deprives it of all
pleasure.
98
If we do any real good, it is mostly _clam, vi, et precario_.
99
Dirt glitters as long as the sun shines.
100
It is difficult to be just to the passing moment. We are bored by it if
it is neither good nor bad; but the good moment lays a task upon us, and
the bad moment a burden.
101
He is the happiest man who can set the end of his life in connection
with the beginning.
102
So obstinately contradictory is man that you cannot compel him to his
advantage, yet he yields before everything that forces him to his hurt.
103
Forethought is simple, afterthought manifold.
104
A state of things in which every day brings some new trouble is not the
right one.
105
When people suffer by failing to look before them, nothing is
commoner than trying to look out for some possible remedy.
106
The Hindoos of the Desert make a solemn vow to eat no fish.
107
To venture an opinion is like moving a piece at chess: it may be taken,
but it forms the beginning of a game that is won.
108
It is as certain as it is strange that truth and error come from one and
the same source. Thus it is that we are often not at liberty to do
violence to error, because at the same time we do violence to truth.
109
Truth belongs to the man, error to his age. This is why it has been said
that, while the misfortune of the age caused his error, the force of his
soul made him emerge from the error with glory.
110
Every one has his peculiarities and cannot get rid of them; and yet many
a one is destroyed by his peculiarities, and those too of the most
innocent kind.
111
If a man does think too much of himself, he is more than he believes
himself to be.
112
In art and knowledge, as also in deed and action, everything depends on
a pure apprehension of the object and a treatment of it according to its
nature.
113
When intelligent and sensible people despise knowledge in their old age,
it is only because they have asked too much of it and of themselves.
114
I pity those who make much ado about the transitory nature of all things
and are lost in the contemplation of earthly vanity: are we not here to
make the transitory permanent? This we can do only if we know how to
value both.
115
A rainbow which lasts a quarter of an hour is looked at no more.
116
It used to happen, and still happens, to me to take no pleasure in a
work of art at the first sight of it, because it is too much for me; but
if I suspect any merit in it, I try to get at it; and then I never fail
to make the most gratifying discoveries,--to find new qualities in the
work itself and new faculties in myself.
117
Faith is private capital, kept in one's own house. There are public
savings-banks and loan-offices, which supply individuals in their day of
need; but here the creditor quietly takes his interest for himself.
118
Real obscurantism is not to hinder the spread of what is true, clear,
and useful, but to bring into vogue what is false.
119
During a prolonged study of the lives of various men both great and
small, I came upon this thought: In the web of the world the one may
well be regarded as the warp, the other as the woof. It is the little
men, after all, who give breadth to the web, and the great men firmness
and solidity; perhaps, also, the addition of some sort of pattern. But
the scissors of the Fates determine its length, and to that all the rest
must join in submitting itself.
120
Truth is a torch, but a huge one, and so it is only with blinking eyes
that we all of us try to get past it, in actual terror of being burnt.
121
'The wise have much in common with one another.' _Æschylus_.
122
The really foolish thing in men who are otherwise intelligent is that
they fail to understand what another person says, when he does not
exactly hit upon the right way of saying it.
123
Because a man speaks, he thinks he is able to speak about language.
124
One need only grow old to become gentler in one's judgments. I see no
fault committed which I could not have committed myself.
125
The man who acts never has any conscience; no one has any conscience but
the man who thinks.
126
Why should those who are happy expect one who is miserable to die before
them in a graceful attitude, like the gladiator before the Roman mob?
127
Some one asked Timon about the education of his children. 'Let them,' he
said, 'be instructed in that which they will never understand.'
128
There are people whom I wish well, and would that I could wish better.
129
By force of habit we look at a clock that has run down as if it were
still going, and we gaze at the face of a beauty as though she still
loved.
130
Hatred is active displeasure, envy passive. We need not wonder that envy
turns so soon to hatred.
131
There is something magical in rhythm; it even makes us believe that we
possess the sublime.
132
Dilettantism treated seriously, and knowledge pursued mechanically, end
by becoming pedantry.
133
No one but the master can promote the cause of Art. Patrons help the
master,--that is right and proper; but that does not always mean that
Art is helped.
134
The most foolish of all errors is for clever young men to believe that
they forfeit their originality in recognising a truth which has already
been recognised by others.
135