Fragments from German Prose Writers. Translated by S. Austin. Illustrated with notes

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John Murray, 1841 - 359 pages

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Page 227 - Enlightenment is man's emergence from his selfincurred immaturity. Immaturity is the inability to use one's own understanding without the guidance of another.
Page 40 - ... flattery; forego the gracious pressure of the hand, for which others cringe and crawl. Wrap yourself in your own virtue, and seek a friend, and your daily bread. If you have, in such a course, grown gray with unblenched honour, bless God, and die.
Page 146 - To have freedom, is only to have that which is absolutely necessary to enable us to be what we ought to be, and to possess what we ought to possess.
Page 40 - The most agreeable of all companions is a simple, frank man, without any high pretensions to an oppressive greatness : one who loves life, and understands the use of it; obliging, — alike at all hours ; above all, of a golden temper, and steadfast as an anchor. For such an one, we gladly exchange the greatest genius, the most brilliant wit, the profoundest thinker.
Page 90 - ... sweet motherly love with which Nature has gifted her; it is almost independent of cold reason, and wholly removed from all selfish hope of reward. Not because it is lovely, does the mother love her child, but because it is a living part of herself,— the child of her heart, a fraction of her own nature. Therefore do her...
Page 233 - ... with respect to it, as a priest, he is not free, nor can he be free, because he carries out the orders of another. But as a scholar, whose writings speak to his public, the world, the clergyman in the public use of his reason enjoys an unlimited freedom to use his own reason and to speak in his own person.
Page 80 - The year is dying away,' says Goethe, ' like the sound of bells. The wind passes over the stubble, and finds nothing to move. Only the red berries of that slender tree seem as if they would fain remind us of something cheerful ; and the measured beat of the thresher's flail calls up the thought that in the dry and fallen ear lies so much of nourishment and life.
Page 72 - A certain degree of solitude seems necessary to the full growth and spread of the highest mind; and therefore must a very extensive intercourse with men stifle many a holy germ, and scare away the gods, who shun the restless tumult of noisy companies and the discussion of petty interests.
Page 26 - All his efforts are directed to the perfecting of his knowledge ; his noble impatience cannot be tranquillized till all his conceptions have arranged themselves into one harmonious whole ; till he stands at the central point of arts and sciences, and thence overlooks the whole extent of their dominion with satisfied glance. New discoveries in the field of his activity, which depress the trader in science, enrapture the philosopher. Perhaps they fill a chasm which the growth of his ideas had rendered...
Page 4 - The Last, Best Fruit of Life. —The last, best fruit which comes to late perfection, even in the kindliest soul, is tenderness toward the hard, forbearance toward the unforbearing, warmth of heart toward the cold, philanthropy toward the misanthropic.

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