All the knowledge I possess everyone else can acquire, but my heart is all my own.
Johann Wolfgang Von GoetheRead
We don't get to know people when they come to us; we must go to them to find out what they are like.
Interpretation
Understanding others requires initiative; we must reach out to truly know them.
This quote emphasizes that genuine relationships and understanding of others do not happen passively. To truly comprehend the character and qualities of individuals, one must actively engage and invest effort in getting to know them, rather than waiting for them to come forward.
In practice
In a team-building workshop, this quote can remind participants of the importance of reaching out to their colleagues.
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.
Sir,' I interrupted him, 'you are inexorable for that unfortunate lady; you speak of her with hate --- with vindictive antipathy. It is cruel --- she cannot help being mad.
I think . . . I said things to Silas. He'll be angry.' 'If he didn't care about you, you couldn't upset him,' was all she said.
Of all the questions I get asked as an undocumented immigrant in the United States, there are two - asked in various permutations via email, social media or in person - that chill me to the bone: 'Why don't you just make yourself legal?' And: 'Why don't you get in the back of the line?'
People don't contest that I'm British as a black man, but they do contest that I'm English. Too many people are going back to an ethnocentric idea of what being English means.
I don't have any children, so I've decided to claim all the future freedom-fighters and hell-raisers as my kin.
He had lived and acted on the assumption that he was alone, and now he saw that he had not been. What he had done made others suffer. No matter how much he would long for them to forget him, they would not be able to. His family was a part of him, not only in blood, but in spirit.
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