quote · Words worth keeping
A man cannot live with every one, and therefore he cannot live for every one. To see this truth aright is to place a high value upon one's friends, and not to hate or persecute one's enemies. Nay, there is hardly any greater advantage for a man to gain than to find out, if he can, the merits of his opponents: it gives him a decided ascendency over them.
A man cannot live with every one, and therefore he cannot live for every one. To see this truth aright is to place a high value upon one's friends, and not to hate or persecute one's enemies. Nay, there is hardly any greater advantage for a man to gain than to find out, if he can, the merits of his opponents: it gives him a decided ascendency over them.
Attribution & collection notes
- Author or tradition
- Goethe
Attribution: attributed - Country attributed
- Not established
A country attribution does not establish the earliest origin. - Historical period
- c. 1790 AD · early modern
author lifetime midpoint (1749–1832); not quotation composition date; not necessarily a composition date.
The voice behind the words.
Listed in the author section of Bartlett’s ninth-edition anthology, in the linked 1905 printing. Dates reflect that historical edition and may differ from modern scholarship.
More from Goethe ↗