
Goethe’s Aphorisms - feross
https://fs.blog/2019/10/the-best-of-goethes-aphorisms/
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FabHK
I'd like to add a short and serene poem which Goethe "probably wrote [...]
onto the wall of a wooden gamekeeper lodge on top of the Kickelhahn mountain
where he [...] spent the night." [1]

 _Wandrers Nachtlied_ ("Wanderer's Nightsong")

    
    
        Über allen Gipfeln
        Ist Ruh,
        In allen Wipfeln
        Spürest du
        Kaum einen Hauch;
        Die Vögelein schweigen im Walde.
        Warte nur, balde
        Ruhest du auch.
    
    
        O’er all the hilltops 
        Is quiet now, 
        In all the treetops 
        Hearest thou 
        Hardly a breath; 
        The birds are asleep in the trees: 
        Wait, soon like these 
        Thou too shalt rest. (Henry Wadsworth Longfellow)
    

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wanderer%27s_Nightsong](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wanderer%27s_Nightsong)

~~~
bigpumpkin
nuts

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User23
It's hard to overstate the importance of Goethe to German culture and
literature. He was a brilliant man with a lively mind. One nonfiction work of
his I quite enjoyed is his Theory of Colours[1]. While many dismiss it as
"wrong" because it isn't a correct physical theory of wavelengths and
spectrum, that's not the point. It's really about the perception of color,
which is psychology and not physics.

On a similar note, Elective Affinities[2] is a novel about human relationships
that is inspired by chemistry. To this day even in English we refer to two
persons as having "chemistry" together.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_of_Colours](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_of_Colours)

[2]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elective_Affinities](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elective_Affinities)

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dwd
If you enjoy Goethe, have a read of La Rochefoucauld's maxims which preceded
Goethe by a century.

"Most of our faults are more pardonable than the means we use to conceal
them."

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lifeisstillgood
One need only grow old to become gentler in one’s judgments. I see no fault
committed which I could not have committed myself.

:-)

~~~
smartscience
Have to say this one got me thinking somewhat. Nowadays we would call these
observations 'tweets' of course.

~~~
mikelyons
Only if we get sucked into the LocNar's twitter ...

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lukebuehler
> #33. Everything that frees our spirit without giving us control of ourselves
> is ruinous.

E.g., smartphones

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hyperpallium
> Difficulties increase the nearer we come to our aim.

 _The first 90% of the code accounts for the first 90% of the development
time. The remaining 10% of the code accounts for the other 90% of the
development time._

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Daub
a great philosopher and poet he may have been, but it is hard to overstate his
negative impact on colour theory. His magnum opus, Colour Theory, was an
emotional rambling mess that took colour thinking away from Newton's
empiricism. The first half of this book is never translated as it effectively
constitutes a hate letter to Newton. the further tragedy is that it is clear
that Goethe had a mostly mistaken understanding of what Newton was stating.

~~~
viburnum
Hegel attacked Leibniz and calculus. Philosophers can be weird.

