All the knowledge I possess everyone else can acquire, but my heart is all my own.
Johann Wolfgang Von GoetheRead
Superstition is the poetry of life.
Interpretation
Superstitions give a poetic and imaginative lens through which to view life.
In this quote, Goethe suggests that superstition serves a vital role in the human experience by enriching our lives with a sense of mystery and imagination. While often seen as irrational, superstitions can add depth and meaning, allowing individuals to engage with the world in a more emotional and artistic way. They reflect our deeper hopes, fears, and beliefs, illustrating the complexities of life beyond mere empirical understanding.
In practice
This quote can be shared during discussions about the role of beliefs in human culture.
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.
In dark ages people are best guided by religion, as in a pitch-black night a blind man is the best guide; he knows the roads and paths better than a man who can see. When daylight comes, however, it is foolish to use blind, old men as guides.
We're all assigned a piece of the garden, a corner of the universe that is ours to transform. Our corner of the universe is our own life - our relationships, our homes, our work, our current circumstances -. exactly as they are. Every situation we find ourselves in is an opportunity, perfectly planned by the Holy Spirit, to teach love instead of fear.
When everything that matters can be bought and sold, when commitments can be broken because they are no longer to our advantage, when shopping becomes salvation and advertising slogans become our litany, when our worth is measured by how much we earn and spend, then the market is destroying the very virtues on which in the long run it depends.
As long as my record stands in federal court, any American citizen can be held in prison or concentration camps without a trial or a hearing.
You and I are all as much continuous with the physical universe as a wave is continuous with the ocean.
Every rascal is not a thief, but every thief is a rascal.
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