Goethe on Being in Your Twenties
“We are so made that we compare everything with ourselves and ourselves with everything. Therefore, our fortune or misfortune depends on the objects and persons to which we compare ourselves; and for that reason nothing is more dangerous than solitude. Our imagination, by its nature inclined to exalt itself, and nourished by the fantastic imagery of poetry, creates a series of beings of which we are the lowest, so that everything else appears more wonderful, everyone else more perfect. And that is completely natural. We so frequently feel that we are lacking in many qualities which another person apparently possesses; and we then furnish such a person with everything we ourselves possess and with a certain idealistic complacency in addition. And in this fashion a Happy Being is finished to perfection—the creature of our imagination.
If, on the other hand, we just continue to do our best in spite of weakness and hard work, we very often find that, with all our delaying and tacking about, we achieve more than others with their sailing and rowing—and—it gives us a true feeling of our worth if we keep pace with others or even overtake them.”
- The Sorrows of Young Werther
-Jessi
