Each nationality contains its centre of happiness within itself, as a bullet the centre of gravity.
Johann Gottfried HerderRead
Thus we build on the ice, thus we write on the waves of the sea; the waves roaring pass away, the ice melts, and away goes our palace, like our thoughts.
Interpretation
What this quote means
This quote reflects on the transient nature of both human creations and thoughts.
Johann Gottfried Herder emphasizes the impermanence of our endeavors and ideas by comparing them to structures built on unstable foundations—ice and waves. Just as these physical forms are destined to disappear, so too are our thoughts and creations, prompting a reflection on the fleeting nature of existence and the significance of embracing the moment.
Themes
ImpermanenceThoughtsTransienceCreationExistence
In practice
Example use cases
During a lecture on the nature of art, this quote can illustrate the fleetingness of artistic expression.
More from Johann Gottfried Herder
All quotes →So says the most ancient book of the Earth; thus it is written on its leaves of marble, lime, sand, slate, and clay: ... that our Earth has fashioned itself, from its chaos of substances and powers, through the animating warmth of the creative spirit, to a peculiar and original whole, by a series of preparatory revolutions, till at last the crown of its creation, the exquisite and tender creature man, was enabled to appear.
Johann Gottfried HerderRead
The savage who loves himself, his wife and child with quiet joy and glows with limited activity of his tribe as for his own life is in my opinion a more real being than that cultivated shadow who is enraptured with the shadow of the whole species
Johann Gottfried HerderRead
A poet is the creator of the nation around him, he gives them a world to see and has their souls in his hand to lead them to that world.
Johann Gottfried HerderRead
Those that embrace the entire universe with love, for the most part love nothing, but their narrow selves.
Johann Gottfried HerderRead
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I've seen a lot of patriots and they all died just like anybody else if it hurt bad enough and once they were dead their patriotism was only good for legends; it was bad for their prose and made them write bad poetry. If you are going to be a great patriot i.e. loyal to any existing order of government (not one who wishes to destroy the existing for something better) you want to be killed early if your life and works won't stink.
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There is no connection between the political ideas of our educated class and the deep places of the imagination.
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Thomas More: ...And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned around on you--where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat? This country's planted thick with laws from coast to coast--man's laws, not God's--and if you cut them down...d'you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then? Yes, I'd give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety's sake.
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The mystic cords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone, all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the angels of our nature.
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Who are we, who is each one of us, if not a combination of experiences, information, books we have read, things imagined? Each life is an encyclopedia, a library, an inventory of objects, a series of styles, and everything can be constantly shuffled and reordered in every way conceivable.
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Our vows are heard betimes! and Heaven takes care To grant, before we can conclude the prayer: Preventing angels met it half the way, And sent us back to praise, who came to pray.
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