Perspectives on Ideas. May 28, 2007. Goethe. Good.

Goethe
Goethe 212 ...from the start of his career, Goethe shrewdly evaded stultification by becoming an endless experimenter.... Bloom, Western Canon. [Goethe endlessly experimented and therefore avoided becoming complacent with his talent.]


Good
Good 329 Johnson: …no man is good but as he wishes the good of others…. Boswell, Life of Johnson, Vol. 1. [People are good only as they wish good for others.]

Good 18 All good is eternally reproductive. Emerson, Nature.

Good 698 If it [the good they seek] come at all, it is something else, which they never dreamed of, and did not particularly want. Hawthorne, The Blithedale Romance. [We don’t expect any good and if it comes, it’s a good they never expected and did not want.]

Good 154 Albert Schweitzer: ...the good consists in preserving life, in supporting it, in seeking to carry it to its highest value. Anderson, The Schweitzer Album. [Good preserves life, supports it, and tries to increase its value.]

Good and evil 386 Spencer: …the association of pleasure and pain, on the average, with good or evil conduct…. Will Durant, The Story of Philosophy, Herbert Spencer. [Pleasure and pain equate to good and evil.]

Good and evil 988 Every wrong thing makes the gulf deeper; every right one helps to fill it up. [Wrongs create deeper holes and good acts fill them up.]

Good and Evil 568 Religion alone can interpret to us what, without its help, man cannot comprehend: why, for what purpose, kind and noble beings, able to find happiness in life, who have not only never injured a living thing but are indeed necessary to the happiness of others, are called away to God, while the wicked, the useless, or those who are a burden to themselves and other people, are left living. Tolstoi, War and Peace. [Why do the good die and the evil live on?]

Good fortune 426 Captive: But since good seldom or never comes pure and undiluted without being accompanied or followed by some evil that spoils or disturbs it…. Miguel de Cervantes, Don Quixote of La Mancha. Part One: 1605. [Good is always accompanied by evil.]

Goodness and evil 417 [Nietzsche] Zarathustra: …the highest evil is part of the highest goodness. Will Durant, The Story of Philosophy, Nietzsche. [Good and evil are intertwined.]