Johann Wolfgang von GoetheИоганн Вольфганг Гёте

The words shown were found, word for word, in the saved source text. Maximen und Reflexionen, from the Nachlass ("Über Literatur und Leben"), zeno.org text of the Maximen und Reflexionen, Aus dem Nachlaß; Saunders, Maxims and Reflections (1893), no. 343.

Goethe: perfection is the norm of heaven, to will the perfect the norm of man. Tolstoy writes «богу» (God) for "heaven" and «свойственно» (proper to) for "the norm", and makes "to will" «Желать» (to wish). Goethe sets the sentence in quotation marks among his posthumous notes, which may mark it as a saying he copied; its earlier source was not found. The zeno.org page is the only German text saved.

The words shown were found, word for word, in the saved source text. Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre (1795–96), Book VIII, ch. 4, Lehrjahre VIII.4, Therese's letter to Natalie (Gutenberg text, Band 8); Carlyle, Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship, Book VIII, ch. IV.

The saying is Natalie's, quoted back to her by Therese in a letter: “If we take people only as they are, we make them worse; if we treat them as if they were what they should be, we bring them to where they can be brought.” Tolstoy changes all three parts. “Take people only as they are” (die Menschen nur nehmen, wie sie sind) becomes «Обращаясь с ближними так, как они того заслуживают» (treating our neighbors as they deserve); “as if they were what they should be” (als wären sie, was sie sein sollten) becomes «как будто они лучше того, что они в действительности» (as if they were better than they really are); and “we bring them to where they can be brought” (so bringen wir sie dahin, wohin sie zu bringen sind) becomes «мы заставляем их становиться лучше» (we make them become better), so Goethe's limit on the improvement is gone. «Люди» (people) become «ближние» (neighbors). Tolstoy reprinted it in «На каждый день» (the tolstoy block). Carlyle's English is quoted from the 1896 reprint of his translation of 1824.

Not found yet.

Not found. Tolstoy first printed the saying in «Мысли мудрых людей на каждый день» (1903), 26 December, directly after Luke 9:62, «никто, возложивший руку свою на плуг и озирающийся назад, не благонадежен для царствия божия» (no man, having put his hand to the plough, and looking back, is fit for the kingdom of God), whose «озирающийся назад» (looking back) it repeats (tolstoy); the Circle drops «на» before «славу». The vol. 40 commentary names no source for it, and Goethe is not among the authors it traces to the Prosveshchenie calendar for 1902. No such sentence was found in Goethe's works or in the anthologies saved. The image of glory as virtue's shadow is old: Seneca writes that glory is the shadow of virtue and will go with her even against her will, sometimes before and sometimes behind (related), and Cicero that glory follows virtue as its shadow (Tusculan Disputations I.109, Yonge's English saved). Whether the line is Goethe's is unverified.

Searched: Goethe's prose maxims (Sprüche in Prosa, 1908; Saunders's English, Maxims and Reflections) and the other Goethe texts saved (Wilhelm Meister, Dichtung und Wahrheit, Vermächtnis) for Tugend with Schatten and Ruhm; every saved source (about 600 folders) for virtue with shadow and fame, glory, or renown, and for Tugend with Schatten and Ruhm; the Jubilee vol. 40 commentary on the sources of «Мысли мудрых людей»; web searches in English, German, and Russian for the wording.

The words shown were found, word for word, in the saved source text. Die Natur. Fragment (Tiefurter Journal, 1780s), Goethes Werke, Weimar edition, II. Abt., vol. 11 (1893), p. 6; Southgate, Many Thoughts of Many Minds (1862), heading “INACTION —Curse on”; Huxley's English in Nature, vol. 1, no. 1 (4 November 1869).

Southgate's English line, closely, which is itself a free condensation of two sentences of the fragment “Die Natur”. The fragment says of Nature: “Sie verwandelt sich ewig, und ist kein Moment Stillestehen in ihr. Für's Bleiben hat sie keinen Begriff, und ihren Fluch hat sie an's Stillestehen gehängt” (she transforms herself eternally, and there is not a moment's standing still in her; she has no notion of remaining, and she has hung her curse on standing still). Southgate: “Nature knows no pause in progress and development, and attaches her curse on all inaction” (intermediary). Tolstoy: «Природа не знает остановки в своем движении и казнит всякую бездеятельность» (Nature knows no halt in her motion and punishes all inactivity). The change from Nature's own ceaseless change to a curse on human “inaction” (“Stillestehen”, standing still, becomes Southgate's “inaction” and Tolstoy's «бездеятельность») was made in the English Tolstoy read; Tolstoy's own changes are «в своем движении» (in her motion) for “in progress and development” and «казнит» (punishes, literally executes) for “attaches her curse on”. Authorship: the fragment appeared in the handwritten Tiefurter Journal; in 1828, when a copy from Duchess Anna Amalia's papers, in a hand he had employed in the 1780s, was sent to him, Goethe wrote that he could not remember writing it but that it agreed with his ideas of that time (related), and the Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie's article on Georg Christoph Tobler points to Tobler's share in it. Huxley's English (1869) translates the German closely.

The words shown were found, word for word, in the saved source text. Wilhelm Meisters Wanderjahre (1829), "Betrachtungen im Sinne der Wanderer"; also in Maximen und Reflexionen, Book II, "Betrachtungen im Sinne der Wanderer", section "Kunst, Ethisches, Natur", 2nd maxim (Saunders, Maxims and Reflections, I, no. 2).

Goethe's question and answer become two statements; "not by contemplating but by acting" and "try to do your duty and you will know at once what is in you" are kept, "what is in you" rendered as "his worth" (as Saunders also reads it). The Gutenberg German uses modernized spelling ("tun").

A likely source, not certain. Vermächtniß (poem, 1829), line 30.

Tolstoy marks it "after Goethe", i.e. a free rendering. "Der Augenblick ist Ewigkeit" is the closest Goethe line found; Eckermann (3 Nov 1823: every moment represents a whole eternity) is another possibility, not consulted. Not found in the Maxims and Reflections or Wanderjahre consulted.

The words shown were found, word for word, in the saved source text. Maximen und Reflexionen (the maxims of the section "Ethisches"), in Goethes Sprüche in Prosa, ed. H. Krüger-Westend (Leipzig, Insel, 1908), Sprüche in Prosa (1908), in the run that begins "Das Wahre ist eine Fackel"; Bailey Saunders, Life and Character II, no. 124.

Faithful: "one need only grow old to become milder; I see no fault committed that I too would not have committed". Tolstoy makes "milder" "kinder" and "I see" "I never meet".