Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Germany
28 Aug 1749 // 22 Mar 1832
Poet / Novelist / Humanist / Scientist / Philosopher

Achievements and Change

Quite often, as life goes on, when we feel completely secure as we go on our way, we suddenly notice that we are trapped in error, that we have allowed ourselves to be taken in by individuals, by objects, have dreamt up an affinity with them which immediately vanishes before our waking eye; and yet we cannot tear ourselves away, held fast by some power that seems incomprehensible to us. Sometimes, however, we become fully aware and realize that error as well as truth can move and spur us on to action. Now because actions is always a decisive factor, something really good can result from an active error, because the effect of all that has been done reaches out into infinity. So although creative action is certainly always best, destroying what has been done is also not without happy consequence.
But the strangest error is that relating to ourselves and to our potential so that we devote our efforts to a worthy task, an honourable enterprise which is beyond our scope, reaching out for a goal we can never attain. Everyone feels the resulting Tantalus-Sisyphus torment the more bitterly the more upright has been his intention. And yet, very often when we see ourselves for ever separated from what we had intended to achieve, we have already, on our way, found something else worth desiring, something conforming to our nature with which we were, in fact, born to rest content.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, in "Maxims and Thoughts"
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On Anger: "For every minute you remain angry, you give up sixty seconds of peace of mind."
Essays
On Destiny: "Our destiny exercises its influence over us even when, as yet, we have not learned its nature: it is our future that lays down the law of our today."
Human, All Too Human
On Friendship: "A crowd is not company; and faces are but a gallery of pictures; and talk but a tinkling cymbal, where there is no love."
Essays