All the knowledge I possess everyone else can acquire, but my heart is all my own.
Johann Wolfgang Von GoetheRead
We know accurately only when we know little, with knowledge doubt increases.
Interpretation
Gaining knowledge can often lead to increased doubt and uncertainty.
This quote by Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe suggests that the more we learn, the more we become aware of the complexity and ambiguity of life. A limited amount of knowledge can give us a false sense of certainty, while deeper understanding reveals the vastness of what we do not yet know, prompting greater doubt and questions about our certainties.
In practice
In a discussion on the complexities of life, this quote can illustrate how deeper knowledge leads to more questions.
All the knowledge I possess everyone else can acquire, but my heart is all my own.
Destiny grants us our wishes, but in its own way, in order to give us something beyond our wishes.
There is a courtesy of the heart; it is allied to love. From its springs the purest courtesy in the outward behavior.
I am amazed to see how deliberately I have entangled myself step by step. To have seen my position so clearly, and yet to have acted so like a child!
Seldom in the business and transactions of ordinary life, do we find the sympathy we want.
Know thyself? If I knew myself I would run away.
A person with a new idea is a crank until the idea succeeds.
I wanted to lie hour after hour on a couch, pouring out the dark, secret places of my heart--do this feeling that over my shoulder sat humanity and wisdom and generosity, a munificent heart--do this until that incredibly lovely day when the great man would say to me, his voice grave and dramatic with discovery: "This is you, Exley. Rise and go back into the world a whole man.
Suppose, my dear Chadd, suppose it is we who are the idiots because we are not afraid of devils in the dark?
Treating your adversary with respect is striking soft in battle.
No bird soars too high if he soars with his own wings.
One is seduced and battered in turn. The result is presumably wisdom. Wisdom! We are clinging to life like lizards. Why is it so difficult to assemble those things that really matter in life and to dwell among them only? I am referring to certain landscapes, persons, beasts, books, rooms, meteorological conditions, fruits. In fact, I insist on it. A letter is like a poem, it leaps into life and shows very clearly the marks, perhaps I should say thumbprints, of an unwilling or unready composer.
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