Maxims and Reflections

V

In the world people take a man at his own estimate; but he must estimate himself at something. Disagreeableness is more easily tolerated than insignificance.

You can force anything on society so long as it has no sequel.

We do not learn to know men if they come to us; we must go to them to find out what they are.

That we have many criticisms to make on those who visit us, and that, as soon as they depart, we pass no very amiable judgment upon them, seems to me almost natural; for we have, so to speak, a right to measure them by our own standard. Even intelligent and fair-minded men hardly refrain from sharp censure on such occasions.

But if, on the contrary, we have been in their homes, and have seen them in their surroundings and habits and the circumstances which are necessary and inevitable for them; if we have seen the kind of influence they exert on those around them, or how they behave, it is only ignorance and ill-will that can find food for ridicule in what must appear to us in more than one sense worthy of respect.

What we call conduct and good manners obtains for us that which otherwise is to be obtained only by force, or not even by force.

Women's society is the element of good manners.

How can the character, the peculiar nature of a man, be compatible with good manners?

It is through his good manners that a man's peculiar nature should be made all the more conspicuous. Every one likes distinction, but it should not be disagreeable.

The most privileged position, in life as in society, is that of an educated soldier. Rough warriors, at any rate, remain true to their character, and as great strength is usually the cover for good nature, we get on with them at need.

No one is more troublesome than an awkward civilian. As his business is not with anything brutal or coarse, he might be expected to show delicacy of feeling.

When we live with people who have a delicate sense of what is fitting, we get quite anxious about them if anything happens to disturb this sense.

No one would come into a room with spectacles on his nose, if he knew that women at once lose any inclination to look at or talk to him.

A familiar in the place of a respectful demeanour is always ridiculous.

There is no outward sign of politeness that will be found to lack some deep moral foundation. The right kind of education would be that which conveyed the sign and the foundation at the same time.

A man's manners are the mirror in which he shows his portrait.

There is a politeness of the heart, and it is allied to love. It produces the most agreeable politeness of outward demeanour.

Voluntary dependence is the best state, and how should that be possible without love?

We are never further from our wishes than when we fancy we possess the object of them.

No one is more of a slave than he who thinks himself free without being so.

A man has only to declare himself free to feel at the same moment that he is limited. Should he venture to declare himself limited, he feels himself free.

Against the great superiority of another there is no remedy but love.

It is a terrible thing for an eminent man to be gloried in by fools.

It is said that no man is a hero to his valet. That is only because a hero can be recognised only by a hero. The valet will probably know how to appreciate his like, – his fellow-valet.

There is no greater consolation for mediocrity than that the genius is not immortal.

The greatest men are linked to their age by some weak point.

We generally take men to be more dangerous than they are.

Fools and wise folk are alike harmless. It is the half-wise, and the half-foolish, who are the most dangerous.

To see a difficult thing lightly handled gives us the impression of the impossible.

Difficulties increase the nearer we come to our aim.

Sowing is not so painful as reaping.

We are fond of looking to the future, because our secret wishes make us apt to turn in our favour the uncertainties which move about in it hither and thither.

It is not easy to be in any great assembly without thinking that the chance which brings so many people together will also make us meet our friends.

A man may live never so retired a life but he becomes a debtor or a creditor before he is aware of it.

If anyone meets us who owes us a debt of gratitude, it immediately crosses our mind. How often can we meet some one to whom we owe gratitude, without thinking of it!

To communicate oneself is Nature; to receive a communication as it is given is Culture.

No one would speak much in society if he were aware how often we misunderstand others.

It is only because we have not understood a thing that we cannot repeat it without alteration.

To make a long speech in the presence of others without flattering your audience, is to rouse dislike.

Every word that we utter rouses its contrary.

Contradiction and flattery make, both of them, bad conversation.

The pleasantest society is that in which there exists a genial deference amongst the members one towards another.

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

The ridiculous springs from a moral contrast innocently presented to the senses.

The sensual man often laughs when there is nothing to laugh at. Whatever it is that moves him, he shows that he is pleased with himself.

An intelligent man finds almost everything ridiculous, a wise man hardly anything.

A man well on in years was reproved for still troubling himself about young women. 'It is the only means,' he replied, 'of regaining one's youth; and that is something every one wishes to do.'

A man does not mind being blamed for his faults, and being punished for them, and he patiently suffers much for the sake of them; but he becomes impatient if he is required to give them up.

Certain faults are necessary to the individual if he is to exist. We should not like old friends to give up certain peculiarities.

It is said of a man that he will soon die, when he acts in any way unlike himself.

What kind of faults in ourselves should we retain, nay, even cultivate? Those which rather flatter other people than offend them.

The passions are good or bad qualities, only intensified.

Our passions are, in truth, like the phoenix. When the old one burns away, the new one rises out of its ashes at once.

Great passions are hopeless diseases. That which could cure them is the first thing to make them really dangerous.

Passion is enhanced and tempered by avowal. In nothing, perhaps, is the middle course more desirable than in confidence and reticence towards those we love.

To sit in judgment on the departed is never likely to be equitable. We all suffer from life; who except God can call us to account? Let not their faults and sufferings, but what they have accomplished and done, occupy the survivors.

It is failings that show human nature, and merits that distinguish the individual; faults and misfortunes we all have in common; virtues belong to each one separately.

VI

The secret places in the way of life may not and cannot be revealed: there are rocks of offence on which every traveller must stumble. But the poet points to where they are.

It would not be worth while to see seventy years if all the wisdom of this world were foolishness with God.

The true is Godlike: we do not see it itself; we must guess at it through its manifestations.

The real scholar learns how to evolve the unknown from the known, and draws near the master.

In the smithy the iron is softened by blowing up the fire, and taking the dross from the bar. As soon as it is purified, it is beaten and pressed, and becomes firm again by the addition of fresh water. The same thing happens to a man at the hands of his teacher.

What belongs to a man, he cannot get rid of, even though he throws it away.

Of true religions there are only two: one of them recognises and worships the Holy that without form or shape dwells in and around us; and the other recognises and worships it in its fairest form. Everything that lies between these two is idolatry.

It is undeniable that in the Reformation the human mind tried to free itself; and the renaissance of Greek and Roman antiquity brought about the wish and longing for a freer, more seemly, and elegant life. The movement was favoured in no small degree by the fact that men's hearts aimed at returning to a certain simple state of nature, while the imagination sought to concentrate itself.

The Saints were all at once driven from heaven; and senses, thought, and heart were turned from a divine mother with a tender child, to the grown man doing good and suffering evil, who was later transfigured into a being half-divine in its nature, and then recognised and honoured as God himself. He stood against a background where the Creator had opened out the universe; a spiritual influence went out from him; his sufferings were adopted as an example, and his transfiguration was the pledge of everlastingness.

As a coal is revived by incense, so prayer revives the hopes of the heart.

From a strict point of view we must have a reformation of ourselves every day, and protest against others, even though it be in no religious sense.

It should be our earnest endeavour to use words coinciding as closely as possible with what we feel, see, think, experience, imagine, and reason. It is an endeavour which we cannot evade, and which is daily to be renewed.

Let every man examine himself, and he will find this a much harder task than he might suppose; for, unhappily, a man usually takes words as mere make-shifts; his knowledge and his thought are in most cases better than his method of expression.

False, irrelevant, and futile ideas may arise in ourselves and others, or find their way into us from without. Let us persist in the effort to remove them as far as we can, by plain and honest purpose.

As we grow older, the ordeals grow greater.

Where I cannot be moral, my power is gone.

A man is not deceived by others, he deceives himself.

Laws are all made by old people and by men. Youths and women want the exceptions, old people the rules.

It is not the intelligent man who rules, but intelligence; not the wise man, but wisdom.

To praise a man is to put oneself on his level.

It is not enough to know, we must also apply; it is not enough to will, we must also do.

Chinese, Indian, and Egyptian antiquities are never more than curiosities; it is well to make acquaintance with them; but in point of moral and æsthetic culture they can help us little.

The German runs no greater danger than to advance with and by the example of his neighbours. There is perhaps no nation that is fitter for the process of self-development; so that it has proved of the greatest advantage to Germany to have obtained the notice of the world so late.

Even men of insight do not see that they try to explain things which lie at the foundation of our experience, and in which we must simply acquiesce.

Yet still the attempt may have its advantage, as otherwise we should break off our researches too soon.

From this time forward, if a man does not apply himself to some art or handiwork, he will be in a bad way. In the rapid changes of the world, knowledge is no longer a furtherance; by the time a man has taken note of everything, he has lost himself.

Besides, in these days the world forces universal culture upon us, and so we need not trouble ourselves further about it; we must appropriate some particular culture.

The greatest difficulties lie where we do not look for them.

Our interest in public events is mostly the merest philistinism.

Nothing is more highly to be prized than the value of each day.

Pereant qui ante nos nostra dixerunt! This is so strange an utterance, that it could only have come from one who fancied himself autochthonous. The man who looks upon it as an honour to be descended from wise ancestors, will allow them at least as much common-sense as he allows himself.

Strictly speaking, everything depends upon a man's intentions; where these exist, thoughts appear; and as the intentions are, so are the thoughts.

If a man lives long in a high position, he does not, it is true, experience all that a man can experience; but he experiences things like them, and perhaps some things that have no parallel elsewhere.

VII

The first and last thing that is required of genius is love of truth.

To be and remain true to oneself and others, is to possess the noblest attribute of the greatest talents.

Great talents are the best means of conciliation.

The action of genius is in a way ubiquitous: towards general truths before experience, and towards particular truths after it.

An active scepticism is one which constantly aims at overcoming itself, and arriving by means of regulated experience at a kind of conditioned certainty.

The general nature of the sceptical mind is its tendency to inquire whether any particular predicate really attaches to any particular object; and the purpose of the inquiry is safely to apply in practice what has thus been discovered and proved.

The mind endowed with active powers and keeping with a practical object to the task that lies nearest, is the worthiest there is on earth.

Perfection is the measure of heaven, and the wish to be perfect the measure of man.

Not only what is born with him, but also what he acquires, makes the man.

A man is well equipped for all the real necessities of life if he trusts his senses, and so cultivates them that they remain worthy of being trusted.

The senses do not deceive; it is the judgment that deceives.

The lower animal is taught by its organs; man teaches his organs, and dominates them.

All direct invitation to live up to ideals is of doubtful value, particularly if addressed to women. Whatever the reason of it may be, a man of any importance collects round him a seraglio of a more or less religious, moral, and æsthetic character.

When a great idea enters the world as a Gospel, it becomes an offence to the multitude, which stagnates in pedantry; and to those who have much learning but little depth, it is folly.

Every idea appears at first as a strange visitor, and when it begins to be realised, it is hardly distinguishable from phantasy and phantastery.

This it is that has been called, in a good and in a bad sense, ideology; and this is why the ideologist is so repugnant to the hard-working, practical man of every day.

You may recognise the utility of an idea, and yet not quite understand how to make a perfect use of it.

Credo Deum! That is a fine, a worthy thing to say; but to recognise God where and as he reveals himself, is the only true bliss on earth.

Kepler said: 'My wish is that I may perceive the God whom I find everywhere in the external world, in like manner also within and inside me.' The good man was not aware that in that very moment the divine in him stood in the closest connection with the divine in the Universe.

What is predestination? It is this: God is mightier and wiser than we are, and so he does with us as he pleases.

Toleration should, strictly speaking, be only a passing mood; it ought to lead to acknowledgment and appreciation. To tolerate a person is to affront him.

Faith, Love, and Hope once felt, in a quiet sociable hour, a plastic impulse in their nature; they worked together and created a lovely image, a Pandora in the higher sense, Patience.

'I stumbled over the roots of the tree which I planted.' It must have been an old forester who said that.

A leaf blown by the wind often looks like a bird.

Does the sparrow know how the stork feels?

Lamps make oil-spots, and candles want snuffing; it is only the light of heaven that shines pure and leaves no stain.

If you miss the first button-hole, you will not succeed in buttoning up your coat.

A burnt child dreads the fire; an old man who has often been singed is afraid of warming himself.

It is not worth while to do anything for the world that we have with us, as the existing order may in a moment pass away. It is for the past and the future that we must work: for the past, to acknowledge its merits; for the future, to try to increase its value.

Let every man ask himself with which of his faculties he can and will somehow influence his age.

Let no one think that people have waited for him as for the Saviour.

Character in matters great and small consists in a man steadily pursuing the things of which he feels himself capable.

The man who wants to be active and has to be so, need only think of what is fitting at the moment, and he will make his way without difficulty. This is where women have the advantage, if they understand it.

The moment is a kind of public; a man must deceive it into believing that he is doing something; then it leaves us alone to go our way in secret; whereat its grandchildren cannot fail to be astonished.

There are men who put their knowledge in the place of insight.

In some states, as a consequence of the violent movements experienced in almost all directions, there has come about a certain overpressure in the system of education, the harm of which will be more generally felt hereafter; though even now it is perfectly well recognised by capable and honest authorities. Capable men live in a sort of despair over the fact that they are bound by the rules of their office to teach and communicate things which they look upon as useless and hurtful.

There is no sadder sight than the direct striving after the unconditioned in this thoroughly conditioned world.

Before the Revolution it was all effort; afterwards it all changed to demand.

Can a nation become ripe? That is a strange question. I would answer, Yes! if all the men could be born thirty years of age. But as youth will always be too forward and old age too backward, the really mature man is always hemmed in between them, and has to resort to strange devices to make his way through.

It does not look well for monarchs to speak through the press, for power should act and not talk. The projects of the liberal party always bear being read: the man who is overpowered may at least express his views in speech, because he cannot act. When Mazarin was shown some satirical songs on a new tax, 'Let them sing,' said he, 'as long as they pay.'

Vanity is a desire of personal glory, the wish to be appreciated, honoured, and run after, not because of one's personal qualities, merits, and achievements, but because of one's individual existence. At best, therefore, it is a frivolous beauty whom it befits.

The most important matters of feeling as of reason, of experience as of reflection, should be treated of only by word of mouth. The spoken word at once dies if it is not kept alive by some other word following on it and suited to the hearer. Observe what happens in social converse. If the word is not dead when it reaches the hearer, he murders it at once by a contradiction, a stipulation, a condition, a digression, an interruption, and all the thousand tricks of conversation. With the written word the case is still worse. No one cares to read anything to which he is not already to some extent accustomed: he demands the known and the familiar under an altered form. Still the written word has this advantage, that it lasts and can await the time when it is allowed to take effect.

Both what is reasonable and what is unreasonable have to undergo the like contradiction.

Dialectic is the culture of the spirit of contradiction, which is given to man that he may learn to perceive the differences between things.

With those who are really of like disposition with himself a man cannot long be at variance; he will always come to an agreement again. With those who are really of adverse disposition, he may in vain try to preserve harmony; he will always come to a separation again.

Opponents fancy they refute us when they repeat their own opinion and pay no attention to ours.

People who contradict and dispute should now and then remember that not every mode of speech is intelligible to every one.

Every man hears only what he understands.

I am quite prepared to find that many a reader will disagree with me; but when he has a thing before him in black and white, he must let it stand. Another reader may perhaps take up the very same copy and agree with me.

The truest liberality is appreciation.

For the strenuous man the difficulty is to recognise the merits of elder contemporaries and not let himself be hindered by their defects.

Some men think about the defects of their friends, and there is nothing to be gained by it. I have always paid attention to the merits of my enemies, and found it an advantage.

There are many men who fancy they understand whatever they experience.

The public must be treated like women: they must be told absolutely nothing but what they like to hear.

Every age of man has a certain philosophy answering to it. The child comes out as a realist: he finds himself as convinced that pears and apples exist as that he himself exists. The youth in a storm of inner passion is forced to turn his gaze within, and feel in advance what he is going to be: he is changed into an idealist. But the man has every reason to become a sceptic: he does well to doubt whether the means he has chosen to his end are the right ones. Before and during action he has every reason for keeping his understanding mobile, that he may not afterwards have to grieve over a false choice. Yet when he grows old he will always confess himself a mystic: he sees that so much seems to depend on chance; that folly succeeds and wisdom fails; that good and evil fortune are brought unexpectedly to the same level; so it is and so it has been, and old age acquiesces in that which is and was and will be.

When a man grows old he must consciously remain at a certain stage.

It does not become an old man to run after the fashion, either in thought or in dress. But he must know where he is, and what the others are aiming at.

What is called fashion is the tradition of the moment. All tradition carries with it a certain necessity for people to put themselves on a level with it.

We have long been busy with the critique of reason. I should like to see a critique of common-sense. It would be a real benefit to mankind if we could convincingly prove to the ordinary intelligence how far it can go; and that is just as much as it fully requires for life on this earth.

The thinker makes a great mistake when he asks after cause and effect: they both together make up the indivisible phenomenon.

All practical men try to bring the world under their hands; all thinkers, under their heads. How far each succeeds, they may both see for themselves.