Page:Aphorisms — an address delivered before the Edinburgh Philosophical Institution, November 11, 1887.djvu/42

 stupidity, is itself one of the most provoking of all forms of that stupidity."

Another author of aphorisms of the Goethe period was Klinger, a playwriter, who led a curious and varied life in camps and cities, who began with a vehement enthusiasm for the sentimentalism of Rousseau, and ended, as such men often end, with a hard and stubborn cynicism. He wrote Thoughts on different Subjects of the World and Literature, which are intelligent and masculine, if they are not particularly pungent in expression. One of them runs—"He who will write interestingly must be able to keep heart and reason in close and friendliest connection. The heart must warm the reason, and reason must in turn blow on the embers if they are to burst into flame." This illustrates what an aphorism should not be; contrast its clumsiness with the brevity of the famous and admirable French saying of Vauvenargues, that "great thoughts come from the heart."

Schopenhauer gave to one of his minor works the name of