Sublime

It is no wonder that we all more or less delight in the mediocre, because it leaves us in peace: it gives us the comfortable feeling of intercourse with what is like ourselves.

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

Goethe thinks of synchronistic events in the same “magical” way. Thus he says, in his conversations with Eckermann: “We all have certain electric and magnetic powers within us and ourselves exercise an attractive and repelling force, according as we come into touch with something like or unlike.”53

Milton and Locke, Rousseau, Jean Paul, and Goethe are the legitimate descendants. Like Dante or Bunyan, he has a revelation of another life; like Bacon, he is profoundly impressed with the unity of knowledge;

Every man hears only what he understands.

"Piety," he says, "is not an end but a means: a means of attaining the highest culture by the purest tranquillity of soul."

German poetry is exquisitely beautiful—but only in German.

The thoughtful and honest observer is always learning more and more of his limitations;

Combien de fois n'ai-je pas à endormir mon sang qui bouillonne ! car tu n'as rien vu de si inégal, de si inquiet que mon cœur. Ai-je besoin de te le dire, à toi qui as souffert si souvent de me voir passer de la tristesse à une joie extravagante, de la douce mélancolie à une passion furieuse ? Aussi je traite mon cœur comme un petit enfant malade.