Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749 – 1832)
German novelist, dramatist, poet, humanist, scientist, philosopher, and for ten years chief minister of state at Weimar.
One must be something in order to do something.
I'm gazing at church and palace, ruin and column,
Like a serious man making sensible use of a journey,
But soon it will happen, and all will be one vast temple,
Love's temple, receiving its new initiate.
Though you're a whole world, Rome, still, without Love,
The world isn't the world, and Rome can't be Rome.
One never goes so far as when one doesn't know where one is going.
For I have been a man, and that means to have been a fighter.
Zwey Seelen wohnen, ach! in meiner Brust.
Man will become more clever and sagacious, but not better, happier or showing more resolute wisdom; or at least, only at periods.
Blut ist ein ganz besondrer Saft.
One often says to oneself … that one ought to avoid having too many different businesses, to avoid becoming a jack-of-all-trades, and that the older one gets, the more one ought to avoid entering into new business. But … the very fact of growing older means taking up a new business; all our circumstances change, and we must either stop doing anything at all or else willing and consciously take on the new role we have to play on life’s stage.
[…] misunderstandings and neglect create more confusion in this world than trickery and malice. At any rate, the last two are certainly much less frequent.
No one would talk much in society, if he knew how often he misunderstands others.
Once a man's thirty, he's already old,
He is indeed as good as dead.
It's best to kill him right away.
The spirits that I summoned up
I now can't rid myself of.
Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it. Begin it now.
Wer immer strebend sich bemüht,
Den können wir erlösen.
Wer reitet so spät durch Nacht und Wind?
Es ist der Vater mit seinem Kind;
Er hat den Knaben wohl in dem Arm,
Er faßt ihn sicher, er hält ihn warm.
The greatest happiness for the thinking man is to have fathomed the fathomable, and to quietly revere the unfathomable.
Love rules (and reigns) not, but it forms (builds and 'trains'); and that is more!
A burgher may acquire merit; by excessive efforts he may even educate his mind; but his personal qualities are lost, or worse than lost, let him struggle as he will. Since the nobleman, frequenting the society of the most polished, is compelled to give himself a polished manner; since this manner, neither door nor gate being shut against him, grows at last an unconstrained one; since, in court or camp, his figure, his person, are a part of his possessions, and it may be the most necessary part, — he has reason enough to put some value on them, and to show that he puts some.
Every male copulating with a woman returns to his origins in the womb. Goethe postponed intercourse until he was forty. This must be related to his self-imposed distance from his forceful mother.
As great, everlasting,
Adamantine laws
Dictate, we must all
Complete the cycles
Of our existence.