Daily Inspiration Quote by Georg Brandes

Brandes sketches a personal ethic that doubles as a program for cultural criticism: courage isn’t only for what threatens you, but for what fails to please you. “Not afraid of what I did not like” reframes dislike as a temptation toward cowardice. The easy move is to dismiss the work, the idea, the person, and call that discernment. Brandes treats that reflex as something closer to fear: fear of being changed, implicated, or forced to revise your taste and, by extension, your identity.

The second sentence is the tell. “To overcome dislike...satisfied one's feeling of honour” admits the payoff is partly ego. Honour here isn’t Victorian pageantry; it’s the self-respect of staying intellectually mobile. He’s describing a moral aesthetic: you prove your seriousness by entering hostile terrain, not by polishing your preferences. There’s a quiet jab at salon culture and nationalist piety, where “I don’t like it” becomes a socially acceptable veto, a way to protect the tribe and your own comfort.

Context matters: Brandes was the Scandinavian critic who pushed “the Modern Breakthrough,” insisting literature grapple with contemporary realities - sexuality, religion, politics - instead of retreating into romance and reverence. In that fight, taste wasn’t neutral; it was a defensive weapon. His line reads like a self-instruction for the critic as athlete: train against your own aversions, because dislike can be the mind’s first draft, not its verdict.