quote · Source-linked selection
Wouldst make thy life go fair and square? Thou must not for the past feel care; Whatever thy loss, thou must not mourn; Must ever act as if new-born. What each day wants of thee, that ask; What each day tells thee, that make thy task; With pride thine own performance viewing, With heart to admire another's doing; Above all, hate no human being, And all the future leave to the All-Seeing.
Wouldst make thy life go fair and square? Thou must not for the past feel care; Whatever thy loss, thou must not mourn; Must ever act as if new-born. What each day wants of thee, that ask; What each day tells thee, that make thy task; With pride thine own performance viewing, With heart to admire another's doing; Above all, hate no human being, And all the future leave to the All-Seeing.
Approximate author period: c. 1790 AD · early modern
Meaning not yet available
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- Author or tradition
- Goethe
Attribution: attributed - Country attributed
- Not established
A country attribution does not establish the earliest origin. - Historical period
- Approximate author period: c. 1790 AD · early modern
author lifetime midpoint (1749–1832)
An author lifetime, approximate period or collection date is not necessarily the date when these words were first written or spoken. - Recorded source
- The Optimist’s Good Morning (1911) (1911 AD)
Complete signed selection 413; printed byline: Goethe; Boston: Little, Brown, and Company, 1911; printed copyright 1907
A collection's publication date can be later than the words it records.
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.
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