To a certain degree we are really the person that others have seen in
us, friends as well as foes. And it works both ways: we ourselves are
the author of others; in some mysterious and inescapable way we are
responsible for the face they show us, responsible not for the
disposition itself, but for the development of that disposition. It is
we ourselves who stand in the way of a friend whose settled habits cause
us concern, for the reason that our opinion that he is settled in his
habits is a further link in the chain that binds and is slowly
strangling him. We would like him to change -- oh yes, we wish the same
for whole nations! But all the same we are by no means prepared to give
up our preconceived ideas about them. We ourselves are the last to
change those. We think of ourselves as mirrors, and only very seldom do
we realize to what extent the other person is himself the reflection of
our own set image, our creation, our victim --
Sketchbook 1946 - 1949, p18 (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich)
translated by Geoffrey Skelton
Link to original text in German
