All the knowledge I possess everyone else can acquire, but my heart is all my own.
Johann Wolfgang Von GoetheRead
Habit is a man's sole comfort. We dislike doing without even unpleasant things to which we have become accustomed.
Interpretation
Habits provide a sense of comfort and stability, even when they are not particularly enjoyable.
This quote by Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe suggests that humans often cling to their habits, as they bring familiarity and comfort to our lives. Even when a habit is undesirable, the discomfort of change can seem more daunting than the unpleasantness of the habit itself, highlighting the complex relationship between comfort and habit formation.
In practice
In a motivational speech about breaking bad habits.
All the knowledge I possess everyone else can acquire, but my heart is all my own.
Destiny grants us our wishes, but in its own way, in order to give us something beyond our wishes.
There is a courtesy of the heart; it is allied to love. From its springs the purest courtesy in the outward behavior.
I am amazed to see how deliberately I have entangled myself step by step. To have seen my position so clearly, and yet to have acted so like a child!
Seldom in the business and transactions of ordinary life, do we find the sympathy we want.
Know thyself? If I knew myself I would run away.
I had gradually come, by this time [1839-01], to see that the Old Testament from its manifestly false history of the world, with the Tower of Babel, the rainbow as a sign, etc., etc. and from its attributing to God the feelings of a revengeful tyrant, was no more to be trusted than the sacred books of the Hindoos, or the beliefs of any barbarian.
The word religion comes from an origin which means "coming together." But priesthood has been doing just the opposite, it has created splits in man, not oneness. Religion means creating in man an organic unity; it has nothing to do with God, it has something to do with you. It has nothing to do with worship, it has something to do with a transformation of your own consciousness.
Ironically, the very fact that democracy has such a lengthy history has actually contributed to confusion and disagreement, for 'democracy' has meant different things to different people at different times and places.
Racism in Brazil is well hidden, subtle, and unspoken, underestimated by the media. It is nevertheless extremely violent.
The physical body is acknowledged as dust, the personal drama as delusion. It is as if the world we perceive through our senses, the whole gorgeous and terrible pageant, were the breath-thin surface of a bubble, and everything else, inside and outside, is pure radiance. Both suffering and joy come then like a brief reflection, and death like a pin.
Slavery was a long slow process of dulling.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.