Wisdom from a Reinassance Man
Three Point Summary | A peek inside the mind of a polymath
“Knowledge is not enough, we have to apply it; wanting is not enough, there has to be action.”
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe was that guy back in the day—he was a poet, novelist, playwright, botanist, geologist, scientist, politician, philosopher, literary historian, and art critic who was fluent in multiple languages. Dude had range.
I first read his Maxims and Reflections while I was studying abroad in Barcelona last summer. I found myself in one coffee shop to another, absorbing the book deeply and scribbling note after note into my journal.
The following is a collection of the ideas and principles that resonated with me, straight from the mind of the great renaissance man.
“Association with women is the basic element of good manners.”
“We are never further away from our desires than when we imagine we possess what we desire.”
“Wisdom is to be found only in truth.”
“You can neither protect nor defend yourself against criticism; you have to act in defiance of it and this is gradually accepted.”
“Ingratitude is always a kind of weakness. I have never known competent people to be ungrateful.”
“No matter whether you’re of high rank or low, you can’t avoid paying the price of your common humanity.”
“Anyone who doesn’t know foreign languages knows nothing of his own.”
“Hatred is active displeasure, envy is passive; hence one need not be surprised that envy soon turns into hatred.”
“It is the most foolish of all errors for young people of good intelligence to imagine that they will forfeit their originality if they acknowledge truth already acknowledged by others.”
“You really only know when you know little; doubt grows with knowledge.”
“Among all peoples, the Greeks have dreamt life’s dream most beautifully.”
“Mastery is often seen as egoism.”
“The Bible…it is clear to me that it will do damage, as hitherto, if it is used dogmatically and in a fantastic way: it will be useful, as heretofore, if it is accepted educationally and sensitively.”
“The first and last thing demanded of genius is love of truth.”
“He who is and remains true to himself and to others has the most attractive quality of the greatest talents.”
“It is hard to come to terms with the errors of the times: if you oppose them, you stand alone; if you allow yourself to be caught up in them, you get neither honour nor joy in the process.”
“Tell me with whom you consort and I will tell you who you are; if I know how you spend your time, then I know what might become of you.”
“To find and to appreciate goodness everywhere is the sign of a love of truth.”
“Superstition is innate in the human make-up, and when you think you have completely ousted it, it takes refuge in the strangest nooks and crannies and then suddenly emerges when one thinks one is tolerably safe.”
“It is our greatest good fortune to have our failings corrected and our faults adjusted.”
“A great failing: to see yourself as more than you are and to value yourself at less than your true worth.”
“Nothing in the world except health and virtue is more to be treasured than knowledge and learning.”
“There are, in fact, few things of greater advantage than learning to appreciate the good points of your opponents.”
“For the process of destruction all false arguments are valid, but by no means for that of construction. What is not true does not construct.
“A day belongs to the domain of error and mistakes, a sequence of time to success and achievement.”
“A collection of anecdotes and maxims is the greatest treasure for a man of the world – as long as he knows how to weave the former into apposite points of the course of conversation, and to recall the latter on fitting occasions.”
“A thinking man’s greatest happiness is to have fathomed what can be fathomed and to revere in silence what cannot be fathomed.”
“A great mistake which we make is that we always think of cause as being close to effect.”
“Thoughtlessness by which we fail to recognize the value of the present moment.”
“The following are mad: he who tries to teach simpletons, contradicts the wise, is moved by empty speeches, believes whores, entrusts secrets to the garrulous.”
“Impatience is punished ten times over by impatience; one wants to draw the goal closer and is only moving it further off.”
SOLID CARNAL! ORALE BRO