# Aphorisms

*from lectures and writings in chronological order*


Notepad

Never speak of the limits of human knowledge,  
but only of the limits of your own.

in a book, ca. 1906

In eternity, learn to live,  
Whoever understands how to resolve  
Their relationship to time. —

Notebook, winter 1907

See only the shell and clothing  
Look in man and woman  
For a higher essence.  
Deceptive are the characteristics  
In the illusory forms of matter  
True only in spiritual realms.

Notebook, spring 1908

What time covers behind you,  
Consider it with a strong spirit —  
What lies ahead of you in the future,  
Await it with equanimity.

Notebook, 1910

Riddle upon riddle arises in space,  
Riddle upon riddle runs through time;  
Only the spirit brings solutions,  
Which seizes  
Beyond the boundaries of space and  
Beyond the passage of time.

V. Vienna, March 19, 1910

The smallest human being on earth,  
A son of eternity  
Will always find himself flourishing in the future As a witness to the past.

Notebook, 1910

The smallest human being on earth,  
A son of eternity,  
Defeats old death  
In ever new life!

V. Berlin, October 27, 1910

It gives itself back  
The soul, enveloped in sleep  
Flees into spiritual expanses  
When sensory bonds oppress it.

V. November 24, 1910

Know yourself.  
Recognize the world within you.  
Recognize yourself in the flow of the world.

1909/10

If you want to venture into the vast sea  
Of the world's mysteries  
The boat that carries you  
Can only be your own soul.

Notebook, 1911

In distant worlds  
Recognizing human beings,  
In the depths of the soul  
Experiencing world forces,  
Thus does man attain  
True knowledge of the world  
Through true self-knowledge.

V. Berlin, October 19, 1911

The living spirit reveals  
Only its power,  
But in death the spirit shows  
How through all death  
It always preserves itself for higher life.

V. Berlin, October 26, 1911

Living, the spirit reveals its power  
Dying, however, the spirit preserves its essence.

Draft

In the boundless outside,  
Find yourself as a human being,  
In the narrowest inner life,  
Feel worlds without limits,  
Then it will be revealed,  
That the solution to the mystery of the worlds  
Is only the human being himself.

Notebook, 1911

The elements allow themselves  
To be permeated by the spirit.  
They had to receive  
The spirit's final impulse of power,  
To clothe the human being  
In spiritual form and soul life.

V. Berlin, January 18, 1912

Everything that lives in the universe  
Lives only by creating within itself  
The seed of new life.  
And the soul surrenders itself only to aging and death,  
In order to mature immortally into ever new life.

V. Berlin, December 5, 1912

In every life lies  
The new seed of life  
And the soul dies to the old  
In order to mature immortally to the new

Draft

... that these results of spiritual research penetrate

through heavy obstacles of the soul  
through confused mental darkness  
to serious clarity  
to bright truth.

V. Berlin, March 16, 1913

Gf. strives through

through many obstacles of the soul  
through fearful spiritual darkness  
to serious clarity  
to bright truth.

Draft

He found his own knowledge pains  
uplifting healing,  
by uniting his own strength  
with the essence of all humanity.

Dornach, August 15, 1915  
Motto on a program painted by Hilde Pollak for the performance of the Ascension scene from Faust II.

The connection with the spirit is severed  
If it is not preserved by beauty.  
Beauty connects the “I” with the body.

1918

In free, spirit-grasping thinking  
Find the will, and in the will  
The true essence of man, which powerfully  
Realizes the individuality gifted by the world  
This is what liberates freedom  
In the life of the true soul.

Notepad, ca. 1918

The world is full of riddles  
Only human beings in their entire lives  
can solve these riddles.  
Therefore, look at the essence of human beings,  
and you will see the answer of the world.

Notebook, 1918

The riddles of the human soul  
are revealed to the spiritual eye  
The gaze into the universe;  
The secrets of the universe,  
Are solved by the gaze of the soul  
Into the inner being of man.

March 1918

Let man seek the spirit,  
Which reveals itself in words,  
For the spirit is with God.  
And the spirit is a God.

V. Dornach, November 2, 1919

The spirit dies in knowledge  
In seeing it is revived  
In seeing, love arises.

Notebook, 1921

Human being, you are the condensed image of the world.  
World, you are the essence of the human being poured out into vastness.

V. Dornach, October 8, 1921

Anthroposophy seeks to offer humanity a “science of humanity with soul” as opposed to a soulless science of the soul, in which true knowledge illuminates the starry goal before the inner eye, without whose light all knowledge remains but a dream of the soul.

Notebook, April 1923

Recognition is awakening in the spirit  
Such recognition is living in the spirit.

Such recognition justifies the  
most original feeling of the  
human soul — freedom.

Such recognition is a light  
that leads back to the  
naivety of piety;  
of godliness.

For V. September 29, 1923  
Notebook

If you want to know yourself  
Look in all directions in the world  
If you want to know the world  
Look into all your own depths.

V. Dornach, November 9, 1923

  
When the soul finds itself  
In the spirit  
It performs that miracle  
Which is so true of the miracle of the world  
As man himself is the son of man.

Notepad, undated

In seeking, recognize yourself  
And becoming, you will become aware of yourself  
If seeking eludes you  
You have found yourself in being  
But being snatches from you  
The truth of your own being.

Notebook, 1924

If you want to recognize your own being,  
Look around you in all directions in the world.  
If you want to truly see through the world,  
Look into the depths of your own soul.

March 30, 1924

If you want to recognize your self,  
Look out into the vastness of the world.  
If you want to see through the vastness of the world,  
Look into your own self.

V. Breslau, June 8, 1924

One should not want to forego the drama of knowledge in favor of  
a grammar of knowledge; nor should  
fear deter one from falling into  
the abyss of the individual, for one rises  
from this abyss in union with many spirits  
and experiences kinship with them;  
through this one is born from the spiritual world: but  
one has accepted death, becomes oneself the destroyer  
of what has become, lives this spiritualized  
and is present in its destruction.

Notepad, undatable