Maxims and Reflections

Forethought is simple, afterthought manifold.

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

In the works of mankind, as in those of nature, it is really the motive which is chiefly worth attention.

"We praise the eighteenth century," he writes, "for concerning itself chiefly with analysis. The task remaining to the nineteenth is to discover the false syntheses which prevail, and to analyse their contents anew."

It is not language in itself which is correct or forcible or elegant, but the mind that is embodied in it;

In psychological reflection the greatest difficulty is this: that inner and outer must always be viewed in parallel lines, or, rather, interwoven.

Ingratitude is always a kind of weakness. I have never known men of ability to be ungrateful.

No one, I think, can perceive their worth without also discerning how nearly they touch the needs of our own day, and how greatly they may help us in facing certain problems of life and conduct, some of them, in truth, as old as the world itself, which appear to us now with peculiar force and subtlety.

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.