Maxims and Reflections

It is only when a man knows little, that he knows anything at all. With knowledge grows doubt.

Character calls forth character.

He did the best in any one's power: he resolutely kept to his own business, and, neither heating nor resting, worked at his own high aims, in the struggle not merely to learn and to know, but to act and to do.

remember that the best education is often to discover these very simple truths for oneself, and learn to see how much there is in commonplaces.

He felt profoundly that the best anyone can achieve for himself is often the best he can achieve for others.

Goethe shows us a more excellent way. Touched with a profound feeling of the worth of life, the wisdom of order, the nobility of effort, he gives us an ideal to pursue and shows us the means of pursuing it.

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.

The whole art of living consists in giving up existence in order to exist.

active scepticism;