Georg Brandes quotes

The stream of time sweeps away errors, and leaves the truth for the inheritance of humanity. (Georg Brandes)
Greatness has nothing to do with results or with success. View quote
Georg Brandes
Being gifted needs courage. View quote
Georg Brandes
But I did not find any positive inspiration in my studies until I approached my nineteenth year. View quote
Georg Brandes
The educator shall help the young to educate themselves in opposition to the age. View quote
Georg Brandes
I came into the world two months too soon, I was in such a hurry. View quote
Georg Brandes
I admired in others the strength that I lacked myself. View quote
Georg Brandes
Instead of trying to educate the human race, they should imitate the pedagogues of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, who concentrated their efforts on the education of a single person. View quote
Georg Brandes
Under the dominion of the priests our earth became the ascetic planet; a squalid den careering through space, peopled by discontented and arrogant creatures, who were disgusted with life, abhorred their globe as a vale of tears, and who in their envy and hatred of beauty and joy did themselves as much harm as possible. View quote
Georg Brandes
Among the delights of Summer were picnics to the woods. View quote
Georg Brandes
What is public opinion? It is private indolence. (Georg Brandes)
Forgetfulness, the unhistorical, is ... the atmosphere, in which alone life can come into being. In order to understand it, let us imagine a youth who is seized with a passion for a woman, or a man who is swayed by a passion for his work. In both cases what lies behind them has ceased to exist and yet this state (the most unhistorical that can be imagined) is that in which every action, every great deed is conceived and accomplished. View quote
Georg Brandes
Poor is the power of the lead that becomes bullets compared to the power of the hot metal that becomes types. View quote
Georg Brandes
I did not know what it was to be happy for a whole day at a time, scarcely for an hour. View quote
Georg Brandes
That a literature in our time is living is shown in that way that it debates problems. View quote
Georg Brandes
I encountered among my comrades the most varied human traits, from frankness to reserve, from goodness, uprightness and kindness, to brutality and baseness. View quote
Georg Brandes
A love for humanity came over me, and watered and fertilised the fields of my inner world which had been lying fallow, and this love of humanity vented itself in a vast compassion. View quote
Georg Brandes
Six hours a day I lived under school discipline in active intercourse with people none of whom were known to those at home, and the other hours of the twenty-four I spent at home, or with relatives of the people at home, none of whom were known to anybody at school. View quote
Georg Brandes
I was a town child, it is true, but that did not prevent me enjoying open-air life, with plants and animals. View quote
Georg Brandes
We need only think of the number of talented men who sooner or later make their apologies and concessions to philistinism, so as to be permitted to exist. View quote
Georg Brandes
The historian is looked upon as objective when he measures the past by the popular opinions of his own time, as subjective when he does not take these opinions for models. That man is thought best fitted to depict a period of the past, who is not in the least affected by that period. But only he who has a share in building up the future can grasp what the past has been, and only when transformed into a work of art can history arouse or even sustain instincts. (Georg Brandes)
The great man is not the child of his age but its step-child. View quote
Georg Brandes
Birth was something that came quite unexpectedly, and afterwards there was one child more in the house. View quote
Georg Brandes
School is a foretaste of life. View quote
Georg Brandes
He who does not understand a joke, he does not understand Danish. View quote
Georg Brandes