“People who never have any time are the people
  who do least.”

  “The utmost that a weak head can get out of experience
  is an extra readiness to find out the weaknesses
  of other people.”

  “Over-anxiously to feel and think what one could
  have done, is the very worst thing one can do.”

  “He who has less than he desires, should know that
  he has more than he deserves.”

  “Enthusiasts without capacity are the really dangerous
  people.”

This last, by the way, recalls a saying of the great French reactionary, De Bonald, which is never quite out of date:  “Follies committed by the sensible, extravagances uttered by the clever, crimes perpetrated by the good,—­there is what makes revolutions.”

Radowitz was a Prussian soldier and statesman, who died in 1853, after doing enough to convince men since that the revolution of 1848 produced no finer mind.  He left among other things two or three volumes of short fragmentary pieces on politics, religion, literature, and art.  They are intelligent and elevated, but contain hardly anything to our point to-night, unless it be this,—­that what is called Stupidity springs not at all from mere want of understanding, but from the fact that the free use of a man’s understanding is hindered by some definite vice:  Frivolity, Envy, Dissipation, Covetousness, all these darling vices of fallen man,—­these are at the bottom of what we name Stupidity.  This is true enough, but it is not so much to the point as the saying of a highly judicious aphorist of my own acquaintance, that “Excessive anger against human stupidity is itself one of the most provoking of all forms of 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 saying of Vauvenargues, that “great thoughts come from the heart.”

Schopenhauer gave to one of his minor works the name of Aphorismen zu Lebens-Weisheit, “Aphorisms for the Wisdom of Life,” and he put to it, by way of motto, Chamfort’s saying, “Happiness is no easy matter; ’tis very hard to find it within ourselves, and impossible to find it anywhere else.”  Schopenhauer was so well read in European literature, he had such natural alertness