1840s, Essays: First Series (1841), Self-Reliance
Context: I read the other day some verses written by an eminent painter which were original and not conventional. The soul always hears an admonition in such lines, let the subject be what it may. The sentiment they instil is of more value than any thought they may contain. To believe your own thought, to believe that what is true for you in your private heart is true for all men, — that is genius. Speak your latent conviction, and it shall be the universal sense; for the inmost in due time becomes the outmost, — and our first thought is rendered back to us by the trumpets of the Last Judgment.
“And now the sagacious reader, who is capable of reading into these lines what does not stand written in them, but is nevertheless implied, will be able to form some conception of the serious feelings with which I then set foot in Emmendingen.”
Autobiography: Truth and Poetry Book xviii. London 1884 p. 115 books.google.de http://books.google.de/books?id=ff-TMQCqkPQC&pg=PA115
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Johann Wolfgang von Goethe 185
German writer, artist, and politician 1749–1832Related quotes
Source: The Human Form: Sculpture, Prints, and Drawings, 1977, p. 7.
“Drawing the line,
The Boundary line
Between this form and that
Is what the mind does.”
Art Psalms (2008), Let Love Draw the Line
“The best books are those, which those who read them believe they themselves could have written.”
The Art of Persuasion
The Educated Imagination (1963), Talk 3: Giants in Time
Upon the Sovereign Sun (362)
Context: Come then, and let us celebrate in the best way we can the anniversary festival which the imperial city is keeping by sacrifices, with unusual splendour. And yet I feel how difficult it is for the human mind even to form a conception of that Sun who is not visible to the sense, if our notion of Him is to be derived from the Sun that is visible; but to express the same in language, however inadequately, is, perhaps, beyond the capability of man! To fitly explain His glory, I am very well aware, is a thing impossible; in lauding it, however, mediocrity seems the highest point to which human eloquence is able to attain.
A Voice from the Attic (1960)
Context: There is no reason to suppose that people today feel less than their grandfathers, but there is good reason to think that they are less able to read in a way which makes them feel. It is natural for them to blame books rather than themselves, and to demand fiction which is highly peppered, like a glutton whose palate is defective.