Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749 – 1832)
German novelist, dramatist, poet, humanist, scientist, philosopher, and for ten years chief minister of state at Weimar.
Let us live in as small a circle as we will, we are either debtors or creditors before we have had time to look round.
Knowst thou the land where the lemon trees bloom,
Where the gold orange glows in the deep thicket's gloom,
Where a wind ever soft from the blue heaven blows,
And the groves are of laurel and myrtle and rose?
Es irrt der Mensch, so lang er strebt.
Und doch sehr oft, wenn wir uns von dem Beabsichtigten für ewig getrennt sehen, haben wir schon auf unserm Wege irgend ein anderes Wünschenswerthe gefunden, etwas uns Gemäßes, mit dem uns zu begnügen wir eigentlich geboren sind.
Der umgang mit frauen ist das element guter sitten.
Grau, theurer Freund, ist alle Theorie,
Und grün des Lebens goldner Baum.
One of the most striking signs of the decay of art is the intermixing of different genres.
Amerika, du hast es besser—als unser Kontinent, der alte.
[Those who make the assumption that literacy carries with it the ability to read] do not know what time and trouble it costs to learn to read. I have been working at it for eighteen years, and I can't say yet that I am completely successful.
"I have found a paper of mine among some others in which I call architecture 'petrified music.' Really there is something in this; the tone of mind produced by architecture approaches the effect of music."
If I work incessantly to the last, nature owes me another form of existence when the present one collapses.
Patriotism ruins history.
All poetry is supposed to be instructive but in an unnoticeable manner; it is supposed to make us aware of what it would be valuable to instruct ourselves in; we must deduce the lesson on our own, just as with life.
Niemand ist mehr Sklave, als der sich für frei hält, ohne es zu sein.
Not to keep from error, is the duty of the educator of men, but to guide the erring one, even to let him swill his error out of full cups — that is the wisdom of teachers. Whoever merely tastes of his error, will keep house with it for a long time, … but whoever drains it completely will have to get to know it.
Is it so big a mystery
what god and man and world are?
No! but nobody knows how to solve it
so the mystery hangs on.
All intelligent thoughts have already been thought; what is necessary is only to try to think them again.
Pleasure and love are the pinions of great deeds.
Seeking with the soul the land of the Greeks.
Noble be man,
Helpful and good!
For that alone
Sets hims apart
From every other creature
On earth.