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Kindle Notes & Highlights
249. A dilettante who takes his subject seriously and a scholar who works mechanically turn into pedants.
254. 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.
461. Absolute activity, of whatever kind, ultimately leads to bankruptcy.
Struggling too much, when not required, is not efficient
476. A great failing: to see yourself as more than you are and to value yourself at less than your true worth.
So True! Self deception and Self hatred
Like me?
479. The greatest evil of our time – which lets nothing come to fruition – is, I think, that one moment consumes the next, wastes the day within that same day and so is always living from hand to mouth without achieving anything of substance.
Goethe seems to be describing the age of Social Media?
480. As little as steam engines can be quelled, so little is this possible in the behavioural realm: the lively pace of trade, the rapid rush of paper-money, the inflated increase of debts made in order to pay off other debts, these are the monstrous elements to which a young man is now exposed. How good for him if nature has endowed him with a moderate and calm attitude so that he makes no disproportionate claims on the world nor yet allows it to determine his course!
Looks like consumerism was a problem even in the times of Goethe
482. As one grows older, the most innocent talk and action grow in significance, and to those I see around me for any length of time I always try to point out the shades of difference between sincerity, frankness and indiscretion, and that there is really no difference between them, but just an intangible transition from the most harmless comment to the most damaging, and that this subtle transition has to be observed or indeed felt.
Discretion is the hallmark of Wisdom
485. Music at its best hardly needs to be new; indeed, the older it is, the more familiar to us, the more effective it can be.
So true about Music!
So the painter need only be remotely artistic so as to find a bigger public than a musician of equal merit; the minor painter can at least always operate on his own, whereas the minor musician has to associate with others in order to achieve some sort of resonance by means of a combined musical effort.
493. To find and to appreciate goodness everywhere is the sign of a love of truth.
Just like teaching in the major religions!
495. The best we get from history is that it rouses our enthusiasm.
What does this mean?
497. One has to remember that there are quite a lot of people who would like to say something significant without being productive, and then the most peculiar things see the light of day.
Like in Dostoyevsky's Demons
498. People who think deeply and seriously are on bad terms with the public.
This is why reading is Dangerous and one can become like the Underground man!
504. Everything that liberates our mind without at the same time imparting self-control is pernicious.
Like Nietzsche
507. Imagination is only ordered and structured by poetry. There is nothing more awful than imagination devoid of taste.
So True on Poetry!
511. Oratory is dependent on all the advantages of poetry, on all its rights. It takes possession of these and misuses them in order to get hold of certain outer momentary advantages, whether moral or immoral, in civic life.
There can be no orration without poetry
513. Although Lord Byron’s talent is wild and uncomfortable in its structure, hardly anyone can compare with him in natural truth and grandeur.
Should read Byron
516. Shakespeare is dangerous reading for talents in the process of formation: he forces them to reproduce him, and they imagine they are producing themselves.
By being inspired by what we read we tend to mimic what we read
518. One is really only alive when one enjoys the good will of others.
So true!
Goes inline with teachings from most Religions
522. A duty absolved still feels like an unpaid debt, because one can never quite live up to one’s expectations.
What does this mean?
528. One who is content just to experience life and act accordingly has all the truth he needs. This is the wisdom of the growing child.
Levin?
531. He who demands too much, who rejoices in what is complex, is exposed to the danger of aberrations.
Me when reading?
537. In meditation as in action we must make a distinction between what is accessible and what is inaccessible; failing this, little can be accomplished either in life or in knowledge.
Mankind is conditioned by needs; if these are not satisfied, there is impatience; if they are, there is indifference.
541. Every great idea, as soon as it makes its appearance, has a tyrannical effect, and that is why the advantages it brings are all too soon transformed into disadvantages. One can therefore defend and praise every institution by pointing back to its beginnings and explaining that everything valid at the beginning is still valid now.
Hegelian dialectic?
589. The Germans, and they are not alone in this, have the gift of making the sciences inaccessible. 590. The English are masters at putting discovery to immediate use so that it leads to new discovery and fresh achievement. Now ask why they are everywhere ahead of us.
591. A man who thinks indulges a curious habit of replacing an unsolved problem with a fantasy he can’t get rid of even after the problem has been solved and truth made evident.
611. The desire to explain what is simple by what is complex, what is easy by what is difficult, is a calamity affecting the whole body of science, known, it is true, to men of insight, but not generally admitted.
615. To begin with, experience is of use to science, then it does damage because experience leads to an awareness of law and exception. Drawing the average between them by no means results in truth.
