“Great minds are related to the brief span of time during which they live as great buildings are to a little square in which they stand: you cannot see them in all their magnitude because you are standing too close to them.”
Vol. 2, Ch. 20, § 242
Parerga and Paralipomena (1851), Counsels and Maxims
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Arthur Schopenhauer 261
German philosopher 1788–1860Related quotes
“People have hope because they cannot see Death standing behind them.”

"May Day"
Quoted, Tales of the Jazz Age (1922)
Context: Mr. In and Mr. Out are not listed by the census-taker. You will search for them in vain through the social register or the births, marriages, and deaths, or the grocer's credit list. Oblivion has swallowed them and the testimony that they ever existed at all is vague and shadowy, and inadmissible in a court of law. Yet I have it upon the best authority that for a brief space Mr. In and Mr. Out lived, breathed, answered to their names and radiated vivid personalities of their own.
During the brief span of their lives they walked in their native garments down the great highway of a great nation; were laughed at, sworn at, chased, and fled from. Then they passed and were heard of no more.

"A Gist in Empty Words" (Chapter 2, p. 11).
No Abode: The Record of Ippen (1997)

Source: Intimacy: das Buch zum Film von Patrice Chéreau

As quoted in speech by Edward de Veaux Morrell https://cdn.loc.gov/service/rbc/lcrbmrp/t2609/t2609.pdf (April 1904)
1900s