Wolfgang van Goethe's Maxims
There is nothing more odious than the majority; for it consists of a few
powerful leaders, a certain number of accommodating scoundrels and subservient
weaklings, and a mass of men who trudge after them without in the least knowing
their own minds.
The obscurity of certain maxims is after all but relative. It is not possible
for everything which is rendered evident to a man in practice to be made clear
to the mere listener.
Our passions are fault or virtues, only intensified.
The intelligent man find almost everything ridiculous, the sensible man hardly
anything.
Character calls forth character.
He who is satisfied with pure experience and acts in accordance with it, has
sufficient truth. The growing child is wise in this sense.
If a man is to accomplish all that is demanded of him, he must deem himself
greater than he is. So long as he does not carry this to an absurd length, we
readily put up with it.
Certain books seem to have been written, not in order to afford us any
instruction, but merely for the purpose of letting us know that their authors
knew something.
Is not the world full enough of riddles already without our making riddles also
out of the simplest phenomena?
Men would come to know each other much better if one man were not always so
intent upon assuming to be the equal of another.
I see no error made which I might not have committed myself.
The whole art of living consists in giving up our existence in order to exist.