The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries Volume Ii Part 35

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.

Mankind is like the Red Sea; the staff has scarcely parted the waves asunder before they flow together again. Thoughts come back; beliefs persist; facts pa.s.s by never to return.

Of all peoples, the Greeks have dreamt the dream of life the best.

We readily bow to antiquity, but not to posterity. It is only a father that does not grudge talent to his son. The whole art of living consists in giving up existence in order to exist.

All our pursuits and actions are a wearying process. Well is it for him who wearies not.

Hope is the second soul of the unhappy.

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.

If a man knows where to get good advice, it is as though he could supply it himself.

A man must pay dear for his errors if he wishes to get rid of them, and even then he is lucky.

Enthusiasm is of the greatest value, so long as we are not carried away by it.

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 vigor.

Every one suffers who does not work for himself. A man works for others to have them share in his joy.

Common-sense is born pure in the healthy man, is self-developed, and is revealed by a resolute perception and recognition of what is necessary and useful. Practical men and women avail themselves of it with confidence. Where it is absent, both s.e.xes find anything necessary when they desire it, and useful when it gives them pleasure.

All men, as they attain freedom, give play to their errors. The strong do too much, and the weak too little.

The conflict of the old, the existing, the continuing, with development, improvement and reform, is always the same. Order of every kind turns at last to pedantry, and to get rid of the one, people destroy the other; and so it goes on for a while, until people perceive that order must be established anew. Cla.s.sicism and Romanticism; close corporations and freedom of trade; the maintenance of large estates and the division of the land--it is always the same conflict which ends by producing a new one. The best policy of those in power would be so to moderate this conflict as to let it right itself without the destruction of either element. But this has not been granted to men, and it seems not to be the will of G.o.d.

A great work limits us for the moment, because we feel it above our powers; and only in so far as we afterward incorporate it with our culture, and make it part of our mind and heart, does it become a dear and worthy object.

There are many things in the world that are at once good and excellent, but they do not come into contact.

When men have to do with women, they get spun off like a distaff.

It may well be that a man is at times horribly threshed by misfortunes, public and private: but the reckless flail of Fate, when it beats the rich sheaves, crushes only the straw; and the corn feels nothing of it and dances merrily on the floor, careless whether its way is to the mill or the furrow.

In the matter of knowledge, it has happened to me as to one who rises early and in the dark impatiently awaits the dawn and then the sun, but is blinded when it appears.

People often say to themselves in life that they should avoid a variety of occupation, and, more particularly, be the less willing to enter upon new work the older they grow. But it is easy to talk, easy to give advice to oneself and others. To grow old is itself to enter upon a new business; all the circ.u.mstances change, and a man must either cease acting altogether, or willingly and consciously take over the new role.

To live in a great idea means to treat the impossible as though it were possible. It is just the same with a strong character; and when an idea and a character meet, things arise which fill the world with wonder for thousands of years.

Napoleon lived wholly in a great idea, but he was unable to take conscious hold of it. After utterly disavowing all ideals and denying them any reality, he zealously strove to realize them. His clear, incorruptible intellect could not, however, tolerate such a perpetual conflict within; and there is much value in the thoughts which he was compelled, as it were, to utter, and which are expressed very peculiarly and with much charm.

Man is placed as a real being in the midst of a real world, and endowed with such organs that he can perceive and produce the real and also the possible.

All healthy men have the conviction of their own existence and of an existence around them. However, even the brain contains a hollow spot, that is to say, a place in which no object is mirrored; just as in the eye itself there is a little spot that does not see. If a man pays particular attention to this spot and is absorbed in it, he falls into a state of mental sickness, has presentiments of 'things of another world,' which are, in reality, no things at all, possessing neither form nor limit, but alarming him like dark, empty tracts of night, and pursuing him as something more than phantoms, if he does not tear himself free from them.

To the several perversities of the day a man should always oppose only the great ma.s.ses of universal history. That we have many criticisms to make on those who visit us, and that, as soon as they depart, we pa.s.s no very amiable judgment upon them, seems to me almost natural; for we have, so to speak, a right to measure them by our own standard. Even intelligent and fair-minded men hardly refrain from sharp censure on such occasions.

But if, on the contrary, we have been in their homes, and have seen them in their surroundings and habits and the circ.u.mstances which are necessary and inevitable for them; if we have seen the kind of influence they exert on those around them, or how they behave, it is only ignorance and ill-will that can find food for ridicule in what must appear to us in more than one sense worthy of respect.

Women's society is the element of good manners.

The most privileged position, in life as in society, is that of an educated soldier. Rough warriors, at any rate, remain true to their character, and as great strength is usually the cover for good nature, we get on with them at need.

No one would come into a room with spectacles on his nose, if he knew that women at once lose any inclination to look at or talk to him.

There is no outward sign of politeness that will be found to lack some deep moral foundation. The right kind of education would be that which conveyed the sign and the foundation at the same time.

A man's manners are the mirror in which he shows his portrait.

Against the great superiority of another there is no remedy but love.

It is a terrible thing for an eminent man to be gloried in by fools.

It is said that no man is a hero to his valet. That is only because a hero can be recognized only by a hero. The valet will probably know how to appreciate his like--his fellow-valet.

Fools and wise folk are alike harmless. It is the half-wise, and the half-foolish, who are the most dangerous.

To see a difficult thing lightly handled gives us the impression of the impossible.

Difficulties increase the nearer we come to our aim.

Sowing is not so painful as reaping.

If any one meets us who owes us a debt of grat.i.tude, it immediately crosses our mind. How often can we meet some one to whom we owe grat.i.tude, without thinking of it!

To communicate oneself is Nature; to receive a communication as it is given is Culture.

Contradiction and flattery make, both of them, bad conversation.

By nothing do men show their character more than by the things they laugh at.

An intelligent man finds almost everything ridiculous, a wise man hardly anything.

A man well on in years was reproved for still troubling himself about young women. "It is the only means," he replied, "of regaining one's youth; and that is something every one wishes to do."

A man does not mind being blamed for his faults, and being punished for them, and he patiently suffers much for the sake of them; but he becomes impatient if he is required to give them up.

Pa.s.sion is enhanced and tempered by avowal. In nothing, perhaps, is the middle course more desirable than in confidence and reticence toward those we love.

To sit in judgment on the departed is never likely to be equitable. We all suffer from life; who, except G.o.d, can call us to account? Let not their faults and sufferings, but what they have accomplished and done, occupy the survivors.

It is failings that show human nature, and merits that distinguish the individual; faults and misfortunes we all have in common; virtues belong to each one separately.

It would not be worth while to see seventy years if all the wisdom of this world were foolishness with G.o.d. The true is G.o.dlike; we do not see it itself; we must guess at it through its manifestations.