Page:Aphorisms — an address delivered before the Edinburgh Philosophical Institution, November 11, 1887.djvu/47

 the helper. I will not begin to quote from Goethe, for I should never end. The volume of Sprüche, or aphorisms in rhyme and prose in his collected works, is accessible to everybody, but some of his wisest and finest are to be found in the plays, like the well-known one in his Tasso, "In stillness Talent forms itself, but Character in the great current of the world."

But here is a concentrated admonition from the volume that I have named, that will do as well as any other for an example of his temper:

If any of you should be bitten with an unhappy passion for the composition of