All the knowledge I possess everyone else can acquire, but my heart is all my own.
Johann Wolfgang Von GoetheRead
The thinker makes a great mistake when he asks after cause and effect. They both together make up the indivisible phenomenon.
Interpretation
The thinker incorrectly separates cause and effect as distinct entities, as they are interdependent in creating experiences.
In this quote, Goethe suggests that the concepts of cause and effect should not be viewed as standalone elements, but rather as intertwined components of a single phenomenon. By attempting to analyze them separately, one risks overlooking the complexity and unity of the situations we encounter in life, which are shaped by both elements working together.
In practice
In a discussion about scientific theories, one might reference this quote to emphasize the interconnectedness of different phenomena.
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.
Man is the only creature disposed to kill huge numbers of members of his own species, and his instrument is usually the state.
What looked safe was not safe. What looked hard and unsafe was probably safer. Anyway, safe was somewhere else in the world.
We're not thought of in terms of color because we are entertainers. We are there to entertain you not because we are black, white, pink, or green or gay or straight or because we are Catholic or Protestant.
Suppose someone were to say: 'Imagine this butterfly exactly as it is, but ugly instead of beautiful'?!
You can find shame in every house, burning in an ashtray, hanging framed upon a wall, covering a bed. But nobody notices it any more.
Whenever I'm in trouble, I pray. And because I'm in trouble all of the time, I pray almost constantly.
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