Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749 – 1832)
German novelist, dramatist, poet, humanist, scientist, philosopher, and for ten years chief minister of state at Weimar.
Die Liebe herrscht nicht, aber sie bildet; und das ist mehr!
Bin ich ein Gott? Mir wird so licht!
The artist may be well advised to keep his work to himself till it is completed, because no one can readily help him or advise him with it...but the scientist is wiser not to withhold a single finding or a single conjecture from publicity.
My son, whoever wishes to keep a secret, must hide from us that he possesses one. Self complaisance over the concealed destroys its concealment.
Niebuhr was right when he saw a barbarous age coming. It is already here, we are in it, for in what does barbarism consist, if not in the failure to appreciate what is excellent?
One says a lot in vain, refusing;
The other mainly hears the "No."
Das Ewig-Weibliche zieht uns hinan.
Bk. II, Observations in the Minset of the Wanderer: Art, Ethics, Nature
Man darf nur alt werden, um milder zu sein; ich sehe keinen Fehler begehen, den ich nicht auch begangen hätte.
Alles Gescheite ist schon gedacht worden.
Man muss nur versuchen, es noch einmal zu denken.
Much there is I can stand, and most things not easy to suffer
I bear with quiet resolve, just as a god commands it.
Only a few I find as repugnant as snakes and poison —
These four: tobacco smoke, bedbugs, garlic, and †.
Three things are to be looked to in a building: that it stand on the right spot; that it be securely founded; that it be successfully executed.
To know of someone here and there whom we accord with, who is living on with us, even in silence — this makes our earthly ball a peopled garden.
First and last, what is demanded of genius is love of truth.
One lives but once in the world.
Who is the happiest of men? He who values the merits of others,
And in their pleasure takes joy, even as though 'twere his own.
Not in the morning alone, not only at mid-day he charmeth;
Even at setting, the sun is still the same glorious planet.
Da stehe ich nun, ich armer Thor!
Und bin so klug als wie zuvor.
Alles Vergängliche ist nur ein Gleichnis.
"As Goethe remarked, all eras in a state of decline and dissolution are subjective, while in all great eras which have been really in a state of progression, every effort is directed from the inward to the outward world; it is of an objective nature. I have always believed, as Goethe did, that here one comes on a true sense of the term classic."
Just as, out of habit, one consults a run-down clock as though it were still going, so too one may look at the face of a beautiful woman as though he still loved her.