Johann Gottfried Herder Quotes

As the shadow in early morning, is friendship with the wicked; it dwindles hour by hour. But friendship with the good increases, like the evening shadows, till the sun of life sets.

The savage who loves himself, his wife and child with quiet joy and glows with limited activity of his tribe as for his own life is in my opinion a more real being than that cultivated shadow who is enraptured with the shadow of the whole species

Those that embrace the entire universe with love, for the most part love nothing, but their narrow selves.

The friend who holds up before me the mirror, conceals not my smallest faults, warns me kindly, reproves me affectionately, when I have not performed my duty, he is my friend, however little he may appear so. But if a man praises and lauds me, never reproves me, overlooks my faults, and forgives them before I have repented, he is my enemy, however much he may appear my friend.

The working of revolutions misleads me no more; it is as necessary to our race as its waves to the stream, that it may not be a stagnant marsh. Ever renewed in its forms, the genius of humanity blossoms.

We live in a world we ourselves create.

To think what is true, to sense what is beautiful and to want what is good, hereby the spirit finds purpose of a life in reason.

It is easier to make a lady of a peasant-girl than a peasant-girl of a lady.

The roots of the deepest love die in the heart, if not tenderly cherished.

It is a hard but good law of fate, that as every evil, so every excessive power, wears itself out.

Have you never observed that children will sometimes, of a sudden, give utterance to ideas which makes us wonder how they got possession of them? Which presuppose a long series of other ideas and secret self-communings? Which break forth like a full stream out of the earth, an infallible sign that the stream was not produced in a moment from a few raindrops, but had long been flowing concealed beneath the ground?

Each nationality contains its centre of happiness within itself, as a bullet the centre of gravity.

Everyone loves his own country, customs, language, wife, children, not because they are the best in the world, but because they are his established property, and he loves in them himself, and the labor he has bestowed on them. The working of revolutions, therefore, misleads me no more; it is as necessary to our race as its waves to the stream, that it may not be a stagnant marsh. Ever renewed in its forms, the genius of humanity blossoms.

Brave is the lion tamer, brave is the world subduer, but braver is the one who has subdued himself.

A poet is the creator of the nation around him, he gives them a world to see and has their souls in his hand to lead them to that world.

Without inspiration the best powers of the mind remain dormant. There is a fuel in us which needs to be ignited with sparks.

Thus we build on the ice, thus we write on the waves of the sea; the waves roaring pass away, the ice melts, and away goes our palace, like our thoughts.

Say oh wise man how you have come to such knowledge? Because I was never ashamed to confess my ignorance and ask others.

The craving for a delicate fruit is pleasanter than the fruit itself.

What of us lies in the hearts of others is our truest and deepest self.

So says the most ancient book of the Earth; thus it is written on its leaves of marble, lime, sand, slate, and clay: ... that our Earth has fashioned itself, from its chaos of substances and powers, through the animating warmth of the creative spirit, to a peculiar and original whole, by a series of preparatory revolutions, till at last the crown of its creation, the exquisite and tender creature man, was enabled to appear.

What destiny sends, bear! Whoever perseveres will be crowned.

Touch not the flute when drums are sounding around; when fools have the word, the wise will be silent.

All our science calculates with abstracted individual external marks, which do not touch the inner existence of any single thing

Man is a central creature between the animals, that is to say, the most perfect form, which unites the traits of all in the most complete epitome.