discoveries; descrying new properties in the thing and new capacities in myself.
Faith is a domestic and private capital, as there are public savings-banks and relief-funds, out of which individuals receive assistance in times of scarcity; but here the believer himself silently draws his interest.
The evil of pietism consists not so much in its obstruction of true, useful, and intelligible ideas, as in the circulation of false ones.
It has struck me, after having devoted much attention to the study of the lives of superior and inferior persons, that we might consider them as respectively the warp and woof of the world's web; for the former really determines the breadth of the fabric, whereas the latter regulate its durability and consistence, with the addition, perhaps, of some sort of design. The shears of the Parcæ, on the other hand, control its length, to which all else is finally forced to submit. We will not, however, carry the metaphor any farther.
Books have a fate of their own, of which nothing can deprive them.
Who never ate his bread in sorrow,
Who never spent the darksome hours
Weeping and watching for the morrow,
He knows you not, ye unseen Powers[1]
A noble and honoured queen was wont to repeat these sorrowful lines when, condemned to the cruelest exile, she herself became a prey to inexpressible grief. She made herself familiar with a work containing these words as well as so many other painful experiences, and derived thence a melancholy consolation. How is it possible thenceforth to arrest an influence already stretching into boundless time ?
I was perfectly delighted, when in the Apollo gallery of the Villa Frascati at Rome, to see with what felicitous invention Domenichino has depicted the scenes most appropriate to the character of Ovid's "Metamorphoses;" one remembers, too, that the delight of the pleasantest things is enhanced by being experienced amid magnificent scenery, nay, that noble surroundings lend a certain dignity and significance to even the most indifferent moments of our life.
Truth is a torch, but one of enormous size; so that we try to slink past it in rather a blinking fashion for fear it should burn us.
The wise have much in common. — Æschylus.
A particular want of good sense in many sensible people consists in their not knowing how to interpret what another says when he has not said it exactly as he ought.
Everybody thinks that because he can speak he is entitled to speak about language.
Tolerance comes with age. I see no fault committed that I myself could not have committed at some time or other.
One is never conscientious during action: none but the looker-on has a conscience.
Do the happy really believe that one who suffers is bound to perish with the dignity which the Roman populace required of the gladiator?
Somebody asked Timon's advice respecting the instruction of his children. "Let them," he replied, "be taught that which they will never comprehend."
There are people towards whom I feel well disposed, and could wish that I were able to be still better disposed.
Even as long habit may induce us to glance at a watch that has stopped, we may look in a fair lady's eyes as though she loved us still.
Hate is an active, envy a passive displeasure; it need not surprise us, therefore, to see how quickly envy passes into hate.
There is a certain magic in rhythm leading us to believe that its sublimity belongs to ourselves.
Dilettantism taken au sérieux, and a mechanical manner of treating science, become pedantry.
Only a master can further art. But patrons may with propriety stimulate the artist himself; this, however, does not always farther the interests of art.
"Perspicuity consists in a proper distribution of light and shade." — Hamann. Hear, hear!
Shakespeare abounds in wonderful metaphors, which are personified ideas, in fact a manner ill adapted to our times, but quite appropriate in an age when art of every kind was under the influence of allegory.
He also takes his similes from objects whence we would not borrow ours; as, for example, from books. Printing had al-
- ↑ These lines are quoted from Carlyle's translation of "Wilhelm Meister." The queen was Louisa of Prussia.
