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Brandes, Georg Morris Cohen, 1842-1927

"Recollections of My Childhood and Youth"

To her, Christianity was
the new, the modern, in contrast to the rationalism of a past age, so
that Christianity and modern views of life in general merged in her eyes
into one unity.
Hers was a deeply feminine nature, and a productive nature. Her fertile
character was free from all taint of over-estimation of herself. She
only revealed a healthy and pleasing self-satisfaction when she imagined
that some person wished to set up himself or herself over her and
misjudge acts or events in her life with respect to which she considered
herself the only person qualified to judge. At such times she would
declare in strong terms that by her own unassisted strength she had
raised herself from a mean and unprotected position to the level of the
best men and women of her day. Herself overflowing with emotion, and of
a noble disposition, she craved affection and goodwill, and gave back a
hundredfold what she received. If she felt herself the object of cold
and piercing observation, she would be silent and unhappy, but if she
herself were at ease and encountered no coolness, she was all geniality
and enthusiasm, though not to such an extent that her enthusiasm ceased
to be critical.
She could over-value and under-value people, but was at the same time a
keen, in fact a marvellous psychologist, and sometimes astonished one by
the pertinent things she said, surprising one by her accurate estimate
of difficult psychological cases.


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