Maxims and Reflections

About the book

This selection of Goethe's maxims, translated by Bailey Saunders, gathers compressed judgments about life and character, literature and art, and scientific inquiry. Some observations sound immediately practical; others resist their first apparent meaning and benefit from being read beside a neighbouring thought. The form encourages both agreement and testing, since a sentence stripped of a larger argumentative setting can reveal its limits as readily as its force. Saunders's preface explains the collection's history and his approach to selection. The volume also includes a section of aphorisms on nature and an index for returning to particular subjects. Its value is less a supply of unquestionable rules than an opportunity to encounter a wide-ranging intelligence repeatedly adjusting the relation between experience, expression, and judgment.

• Judgment
• Art and knowledge
• Practical reflection

Why read it

For brief, thought-provoking observations that lend themselves to rereading and disagreement rather than hurried consumption.

English translation by Bailey Saunders