Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749 – 1832)
German novelist, dramatist, poet, humanist, scientist, philosopher, and for ten years chief minister of state at Weimar.
Tell me you stones, O speak, you towering palaces!
Streets, say a word! Spirit of this place, are you dumb?
All things are alive in your sacred walls
Eternal Rome, it's only for me all is still.
One is never satisfied with a portrait of a person that one knows.
Should I not be proud, when for twenty years I have had to admit to myself that the great Newton and all the mathematicians and noble calculators along with him were involved in a decisive error with respect to the doctrine of color, and that I among millions was the only one who knew what was right in this great subject of nature?
When you see some evil you proceed to immediate action, you make an immediate attack to cure the symptom.
Wer nichts wagt, gerwinnt nichts.
Wer nie sein Brod mit Tränen ass,
Wer nie die kummervollen Nächte
Auf seinem Bette weinend sass,
Der kennt euch nicht, ihr himmlischen Mächte.
What's it to you if I love you?
Nur der verdient sich Freiheit wie das Leben der täglich sie erobern muss.
Was glänzt, ist für den Augenblick geboren;
das Echte bleibt der Nachwelt unverloren.
The desire to explain what is simple by what is complex, what is easy by what is difficult, is a calamity .
Wo viel Licht ist, ist auch viel Schatten.
Let the noble man
Be generous and good,
Tirelessly achieving
What is just and useful:
Let him be a model
For those beings whom he surmises.
Welche Regierung die beste sei? Diejenige, die uns lehrt, uns selbst zu regieren.
Was uns alle bändigt, das Gemeine.
Der Handelnde ist immer gewissenlos; es hat niemand Gewissen als der Betrachtende.
As great, everlasting,
Adamantine laws
Dictate, we must all
Complete the cycles
Of our existence.
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.
Love rules (and reigns) not, but it forms (builds and 'trains'); and that is more!
[The next sentence after predicting that great progress is coming:] I foresee the time when God will have no further pleasure in man, but will break up everything for a new creation.
Instruction does much, but encouragement everything.