Quote by Johann von Goethe

The mark of highest originality lies in the ability to develop a familiar idea so fruitfully that it would seem no one else would ever have discovered so much to be hidden in it.

The mark of highest originality lies in the ability to devel

Summary

This quote suggests that true originality can be found in the ability to take a common or well-known idea and explore it so deeply and uniquely that it appears as if no one else could have unearthed as much meaning from it. It highlights the importance of being able to bring new insights, perspectives, and depths to ideas that may initially appear familiar or ordinary. This level of creativity is what sets truly original thinkers apart, as they are able to find hidden layers and possibilities where others may see limitations or repetition.

Topics

By Johann von Goethe

Liked the quote? Share it with your friends.

Random Quotations

No sooner is your ocean filled, than he grumbles that it mig

No sooner is your ocean filled, than he grumbles that it might have been of better vintage. Try him with half of a Universe, of an Omnipotence, he sets to quarrelling with the proprietor of the other half, and declares himself the most maltreated of men. Always there is a black spot in our sunshine: it is even as I said, the Shadow of Ourselves.

There are those who will say that the liberation of humanity

There are those who will say that the liberation of humanity, the freedom of man and mind is nothing but a dream. They are right. It is the American Dream.

Archibald MacLeish

The propensity to truck, barter and exchange one thing for a

The propensity to truck, barter and exchange one thing for another is common to all men, and to be found in no other race of animals.

Everyone related to me in my circle was from church: church

Everyone related to me in my circle was from church: church friends, church school, church activities. All my friends weren't allowed to watch MTV or go to PG-13 movies or listen to the radio, so I didn't really know anything different. That's how I was raised.

We are all of us resigned to death: it's life we aren't resi

We are all of us resigned to death: it's life we aren't resigned to.

Of course you're always at liberty to judge the critic. Judg

Of course you're always at liberty to judge the critic. Judge people as critics, however, and you'll condemn them all!

When one of your dreams come true, you begin to look at the

When one of your dreams come true, you begin to look at the others more carefully.

How very paltry and limited the normal human intellect is, a

How very paltry and limited the normal human intellect is, and how little lucidity there is in the human consciousness, may be judged from the fact that, despite the ephemeral brevity of human life, the uncertainty of our existence and the countless enigmas which press upon us from all sides, everyone does not continually and ceaselessly philosophize, but that only the rarest of exceptions do.

Arthur Schopenhauer

From a magician's midnight sleeve the radio-singers distribu

From a magician's midnight sleeve the radio-singers distribute all their love-songs over the dew-wet lawns.

Elizabeth Bishop

Loyalty to the principles upon which our Government rests po

Loyalty to the principles upon which our Government rests positively demands that the equality before the law which it guarantees to every citizen should be justly and in good faith conceded in all parts of the land.

Grover Cleveland, Second Inaugur

I am not willing to risk the lives of German soldiers for co

I am not willing to risk the lives of German soldiers for countries whose names we cannot spell properly.

I had real plans for my next decade and felt I'd worked hard

I had real plans for my next decade and felt I'd worked hard enough to earn it. Will I really not live to see my children married? To watch the World Trade Center rise again? To read - if not indeed write - the obituaries of elderly villains like Henry Kissinger and Joseph Ratzinger?

Christopher Hitchens