All the knowledge I possess everyone else can acquire, but my heart is all my own.
Johann Wolfgang Von GoetheRead
[W]hat counts is that one perceives excellence and dares to give it expression, which sounds little but is in fact a great deal.
Interpretation
The essence of greatness lies in recognizing excellence and having the courage to express it.
Goethe emphasizes the importance of perception and expression in appreciating excellence. To truly recognize something as exceptional and to dare to vocalize or showcase it is not a small task; it requires courage and conviction, suggesting that the act of expression is as significant as the excellence itself.
In practice
During a workshop on creativity, you could use this quote to inspire artists to express their unique visions.
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.
To the Suprematist the visual phenomena of the objective world are, in themselves, meaningless; the significant thing is feeling, as such, quite apart from the environment in which it is called forth.
It always gave me the creeps when I saw performers who desperately wanted the audience to like them. That's not what I'm about.
I've always believed in writing without a collaborator, because where two people are writing the same book, each believes he gets all the worry and only half the royalties.
From things that have happened and from things as they exist and from all things that you know and all those you cannot know, you make something through your invention that is not a representation but a whole new thing truer than anything true and alive, and you make it alive, and if you make it well enough, you give it immortality.
Playing and listening to music gives you a sense of fulfilment because you have to put everything in you at its disposal.
Art is not to be found by touring to Egypt, China, or Peru; if you cannot find it at your own door, you will never find it.
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