Maxims and Reflections
Scholars are generally malignant when they are refuting others; and if
they think a man is making a mistake, they straightway look upon him as
their mortal enemy.
136
Beauty can never really understand itself.
III
137
It is much easier to recognise error than to find truth; for error lies
on the surface and may be overcome; but truth lies in the depths, and to
search for it is not given to every one.
138
We all live on the past, and through the past are destroyed.
139
We are no sooner about to learn some great lesson than we take refuge in
our own innate poverty of soul, and yet for all that the lesson has not
been quite in vain.
140
The world of empirical morality consists for the most part of nothing
but ill-will and envy.
141
Life seems so vulgar, so easily content with the commonplace things of
every day, and yet it always nurses and cherishes certain higher claims
in secret, and looks about for the means of satisfying them.
142
Confidences are strange things. If you listen only to one man, it is
possible that he is deceived or mistaken; if you listen to many, they
are in a like case; and, generally, you cannot get at the truth at all.
143
No one should desire to live in irregular circumstances; but if by
chance a man falls into them, they test his character and show of how
much determination he is capable.
144
An honourable man with limited ideas often sees through the rascality of
the most cunning jobber.
145
If a man feels no love, he must learn how to flatter; otherwise he will
not succeed.
146
Against criticism a man can neither protest nor defend himself; he must
act in spite of it, and then criticism will gradually yield to him.
147
The masses cannot dispense with men of ability, and such men are always
a burden to them.
148
If a man spreads my failings abroad, he is my master, even though he
were my servant.
149
Whether memoirs are written by masters of servants, or by servants of
masters, the processes always meet.
150
If you lay duties upon people and give them no rights, you must pay them
well.
151
I can promise to be sincere, but not to be impartial.
152
Ingratitude is always a kind of weakness. I have never known men of
ability to be ungrateful.
153
We are all so limited that we always think we are right; and so we may
conceive of an extraordinary mind which not only errs but has a positive
delight in error.
154
It is very rare to find pure and steady activity in the accomplishment
of what is good and right. We usually see pedantry trying to keep back,
and audacity trying to go on too fast.
155
Word and picture are correlatives which are continually in quest of each
other, as is sufficiently evident in the case of metaphors and similes.
So from all time what was said or sung inwardly to the ear had to be
presented equally to the eye. And so in childish days we see word and
picture in continual balance; in the book of the law and in the way of
salvation, in the Bible and in the spelling-book. When something was
spoken which could not be pictured, and something pictured which could
not be spoken, all went well; but mistakes were often made, and a word
was used instead of a picture; and thence arose those monsters of
symbolical mysticism, which are doubly an evil.
156
For the man of the world a collection of anecdotes and maxims is of the
greatest value, if he knows how to intersperse the one in his
conversation at fitting moments, and remember the other when a case
arises for their application.
157
When you lose interest in anything, you also lose the memory for it.
158
The world is a bell with a crack in it; it rattles, but does not ring.
159
The importunity of young dilettanti must be borne with good-will; for as
they grow old they become the truest worshippers of Art and the Master.
160
People have to become really bad before they care for nothing but
mischief, and delight in it.
161
Clever people are the best encyclopædia.
162
There are people who make no mistakes because they never wish to do
anything worth doing.
163
If I know my relation to myself and the outer world, I call it truth.
Every man can have his own peculiar truth; and yet it is always the
same.
164
No one is the master of any truly productive energy; and all men must
let it work on by itself.
165
A man never understands how anthropomorphic he is.
166
A difference which offers nothing to the understanding is no difference
at all.
167
A man cannot live for every one; least of all for those with whom he
would not care to live.
168
If a man sets out to study all the laws, he will have no time left to
transgress them.
169
Things that are mysterious are not yet miracles.
170
'Converts are not in my good books.'
171
A frivolous impulsive encouragement of problematical talents was a
mistake of my early years; and I have never been able to abandon it
altogether.
172
I should like to be honest with you, without our falling out; but it
will not do. You act wrongly, and fall between two stools; you win no
adherents and lose your friends. What is to be the end of it?
173
It is all one whether you are of high or of humble origin. You will
always have to pay for your humanity.
174
When I hear people speak of liberal ideas, it is always a wonder to me
that men are so readily put off with empty verbiage. An idea cannot be
liberal; but it may be potent, vigorous, exclusive, in order to fulfil
its mission of being productive. Still less can a concept be liberal;
for a concept has quite another mission. Where, however, we must look
for liberality, is in the sentiments; and the sentiments are the inner
man as he lives and moves. A man's sentiments, however, are rarely
liberal, because they proceed directly from him personally, and from his
immediate relations and requirements. Further we will not write, and let
us apply this test to what we hear every day.
175
If a clever man commits a folly, it is not a small one.
176
There is a poetry without figures of speech, which is a single figure of
speech.
177
I went on troubling myself about general ideas until I learnt to
understand the particular achievements of the best men.
178
It is only when a man knows little, that he knows anything at all. With
knowledge grows doubt.
179
The errors of a man are what make him really lovable.
180
There are men who love their like and seek it; others love their
opposite and follow after it.
181
If a man has always let himself think the world as bad as the adversary
represents it to be, he must have become a miserable person.
182
Ill-favour and hatred limit the spectator to the surface, even when keen
perception is added unto them; but when keen perception unites with
good-will and love, it gets at the heart of man and the world; nay, it
may hope to reach the highest goal of all.
183
Raw matter is seen by every one; the contents are found only by him who
has his eyes about him; and the form is a secret to the majority.
184
We may learn to know the world as we please: it will always retain a
bright and a dark side.
185
Error is continually repeating itself in action, and we must unweariedly
repeat the truth in word.
186
As in Rome there is, apart from the Romans, a population of statues, so
apart from this real world there is a world of illusion, almost more
potent, in which most men live.
187
Mankind is like the Red Sea: the staff has scarcely parted the waves
asunder, before they flow together again.
188
Thoughts come back; beliefs persist; facts pass by never to return.
189
Of all peoples, the Greeks have dreamt the dream of life the best.
190
We readily bow to antiquity, but not to posterity. It is only a father
that does not grudge talent to his son.
191
There is no virtue in subordinating oneself; but there is virtue in
descending, and in recognising anything as above us, which is beneath
us.
192
The whole art of living consists in giving up existence in order to
exist.
193
All our pursuits and actions are a wearying process. Well is it for him
who wearies not.
194
Hope is the second soul of the unhappy.
195
Love is a true renovator.
196
Mankind is not without a wish to serve; hence the chivalry of the French
is a servitude.
197
In the theatre the pleasure of what we see and hear restrains our
reflections.
198
There is no limit to the increase of experience, but theories cannot
become clearer and more complete in just the same sense. The field of
experience is the whole universe in all directions. Theory remains shut
up within the limits of the human faculties. Hence there is no way of
looking at the world, but it recurs, and the curious thing happens, that
with increased experience a limited theory may again come into favour.
It is always the same world which stands open to observation, which is
continually being contemplated or guessed at; and it is always the same
men who live in the true or in the false; more at their ease in the
latter than in the former.
199
Truth is at variance with our natures, but not so error; and for a very
simple reason. Truth requires us to recognise ourselves as limited, but
error flatters us with the belief that in one way or another we are
subject to no bounds at all.
200
That some men think they can still do what they have been able to do, is
natural enough; that others think they can do what they have never been
able to do, is singular, but not rare.
201
At all times it has not been the age, but individuals alone, who have
worked for knowledge. It was the age which put Socrates to death by
poison, the age which burnt Huss. The ages have always remained alike.
202
That is true Symbolism, where the more particular represents the more
general, not as a dream or shade, but as a vivid, instantaneous
revelation of the Inscrutable.
203
Everything of an abstract or symbolic nature, as soon as it is
challenged by realities, ends by consuming them and itself. So credit
consumes both money and itself.
204
Mastery often passes for egoism.
205
With Protestants, as soon as good works cease and their merit is denied,
sentimentality takes their place.
206
If a man knows where to get good advice, it is as though he could supply
it himself.
207
The use of mottoes is to indicate something we have not attained, but
strive to attain. It is right to keep them always before our eyes.
208
'If a man cannot lift a stone himself, let him leave it, even though he
has some one to help him.'
209
Despotism promotes general self-government, because from top to bottom
it makes the individual responsible, and so produces the highest degree
of activity.
210
A man must pay dear for his errors if he wishes to get rid of them, and
even then he is lucky.
211
Enthusiasm is of the greatest value, so long as we are not carried away
by it.
212
School itself is the only true preparation for it.
213
Error is related to truth as sleep to waking. I have observed that on
awakening from error a man turns again to truth as with new vigour.
214
Every one suffers who does not work for himself. A man works for others
to have them share in his joy.
215
Men's prejudices rest upon their character for the time being and cannot
be overcome, as being part and parcel of themselves. Neither evidence
nor common-sense nor reason has the slightest influence upon them.
216
Characters often make a law of their failings. Men who know the world
have said that when prudence is only fear in disguise, its scruples