Goethe, whose letters I've been reading very intensively during the past few weeks, is always stressing Verträglichkeit - agreeing to live and let live - as the most important element of friendship: we shouldn't try to change people, but simply let them be as they are, making the best of even partial concord, instead of trying to force a fictitious perfect harmony." - Meaning and context.">
''Broken Lights p. 82 Diaries 1951-1952
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Goethe, whose letters I've been reading very intensively during the past few weeks, is always stressing Verträglichkeit - agreeing to live and let live - as the most important element of friendship: we shouldn't try to change people, but simply let them be as they are, making the best of even partial concord, instead of trying to force a fictitious perfect harmony.

— Ida Friederike Görres

What It Means

This is a placeholder explanation generated by the low-overhead model. It interprets "Goethe, whose letters I've been reading very intensively during the past few weeks, is always stressing Verträglichkeit - agreeing to live and let live - as the most important element of friendship: we shouldn't try to change people, but simply let them be as they are, making the best of even partial concord, instead of trying to force a fictitious perfect harmony." in the context of "''Broken Lights p. 82 Diaries 1951-1952" to mean that wisdom is timeless.

Source: Wikiquote: "Ida Friederike Görres" (Quotes: From Broken Lights and The Hidden Face :) The 'What it means' explanation text was generated by Google Gemini Flash (accessed January 18, 2026). https://gemini.google.com/app
Ida Friederike Görres

About Ida Friederike Görres

Ida Friederike Görres (born Elisabeth Friederike, Reichsgräfin Coudenhove-Kalergi; 2 December 1901, in Schloss Ronsperg, Bohemia – 15 May 1971, in Frankfurt am Main) was a Catholic writer. From the Coudenhove-Kalergi family, she was the daughter, one of seven children, of Count Heinrich von Coudenhove-Kalergi and his Japanese wife Mitsuko Aoyama.