That one can be a great mind without noticing anything of it is an absurdity of which only hopeless incompetence can persuade itself, in order that it may regard the feeling of its own nothingness as modesty. … Goethe has said it bluntly: ‘Only good-for-nothings are modest.’ But even more incontestable would be the assertion that those who so eagerly demand modesty from others … are assuredly good-for-nothings, i.e. wretches entirely without merit.

What It Means

This is a placeholder explanation generated by the low-overhead model. It interprets "That one can be a great mind without noticing anything of it is an absurdity of which only hopeless incompetence can persuade itself, in order that it may regard the feeling of its own nothingness as modesty. … Goethe has said it bluntly: ‘Only good-for-nothings are modest.’ But even more incontestable would be the assertion that those who so eagerly demand modesty from others … are assuredly good-for-nothings, i.e. wretches entirely without merit." in the context of "Arthur Schopenhauer, cited in Karl Kraus, “Self Admiration,” 1908, Helene Scher, trans., No Compromise (New York: 1977), p. 28" to mean that wisdom is timeless.