Maxims and Reflections · Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
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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. 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. When you lose interest in anything, you also lose the memory for it. The world is a bell with a crack in it; it rattles, but does not ring. 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.
People have to become really bad before they care for nothing but mischief, and delight in it. Clever people are the best encyclopædia. There are people who make no mistakes because they never wish to do anything worth doing. 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. No one is the master of any truly productive energy; and all men must let it work on by itself. A man never understands how anthropomorphic he is. A difference which offers nothing to the understanding is no difference at all. A man cannot live for every one; least of all for those with whom he would not care to live. If a man sets out to study all the laws, he will have no time left to transgress them. Things that are mysterious are not yet miracles. 'Converts are not in my good books.' A frivolous impulsive encouragement of problematical talents was a mistake of my early years; and I have never been able to abandon it altogether. 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? It is all one whether you are of high or of humble origin. You will always have to pay for your humanity.
Text from Project Gutenberg, public domain in the United States.