is
not part of our life; it is only part of our experience; we throw it off
and guard ourselves against it as against frost, storm, rain, hail, or
any other of the external evils which may be expected to happen.

583

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.

584

Every one knows how to value what he has attained in life; most of all
the man who thinks and reflects in his old age. He has a comfortable
feeling that it is something of which no one can rob him.

585

The best metempsychosis is for us to appear again in others.

586

It is very seldom that we satisfy ourselves; all the more consoling is
it to have satisfied others.

587

We look back upon our life only as on a thing of broken pieces, because
our misses and failures are always the first to strike us, and outweigh
in our imagination what we have done, and attained.

588

The sympathetic youth sees nothing of this; he reads, enjoys, and uses
the youth of one who has gone before him, and rejoices in it with all
his heart, as though he had once been what he now is.

589

Science helps us before all things in this, that it somewhat lightens
the feeling of wonder with which Nature fills us; then, however, as life
becomes more and more complex, it creates new facilities for the
avoidance of what would do us harm and the promotion of what will do us
good.

590

It is always our eyes alone, our way of looking at things. Nature alone
knows what she means now, and what she had meant in the past.

NATURE: APHORISMS

Nature! We are surrounded by her and locked in her clasp: powerless to
leave her, and powerless to come closer to her. Unasked and unwarned she
takes us up into the whirl of her dance, and hurries on with us till we
are weary and fall from her arms.

She creates new forms without end: what exists now, never was before;
what was, comes not again; all is new and yet always the old.

We live in the midst of her and are strangers. She speaks to us
unceasingly and betrays not her secret. We are always influencing her
and yet can do her no violence.

Individuality seems to be all her aim, and she cares nought for
i