
“The sure conviction that we could if we wanted to is the reason so many good minds are idle.”
K 27
Aphorisms (1765-1799), Notebook K (1789-1793)
As quoted by Aulus Gellius in Noctes Atticae (Attic Nights), Book XIX, Chapter X
Iphigenia
Otioso in otio animus nescit quid velit.
“The sure conviction that we could if we wanted to is the reason so many good minds are idle.”
K 27
Aphorisms (1765-1799), Notebook K (1789-1793)
“Idleness is only the refuge of weak minds.”
20 July 1749
Letters to His Son on the Art of Becoming a Man of the World and a Gentleman (1774)
Encountering Directors interview (1969)
Context: When a scene is being shot, it is very difficult to know what one wants it to say, and even if one does know, there is always a difference between what one has in mind and the result on film. I never think ahead of the shot I'm going to make the following day because if I did, I'd only produce a bad imitation of the original image in my mind. So what you see on the screen doesn't represent my exact meaning, but only my possibilities of expression, with all the limitations implied in that phrase. Perhaps the scene reveals my incapacity to do better; perhaps I felt subconsciously ironic toward it. But it is on film; the rest is up to you.
“There is this first benefit from myths, that we have to search and do not have our minds idle.”
III. Concerning myths; that they are divine, and why.
On the Gods and the Cosmos
Context: There is this first benefit from myths, that we have to search and do not have our minds idle.
That the myths are divine can be seen from those who have used them. Myths have been used by inspired poets, by the best of philosophers, by those who established the mysteries, and by the Gods themselves in oracles. But why the myths are divine it is the duty of philosophy to inquire. Since all existing things rejoice in that which is like them and reject that which is unlike, the stories about the Gods ought to be like the Gods, so that they may both be worthy of the divine essence and make the Gods well disposed to those who speak of them: which could only be done by means of myths.