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Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Quotes (0-)
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About Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
What you can do, or dream you can, begin it,
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Explore our curated collection of the most famous and impactful Johann Wolfgang von Goethe quotes.
βPatriotism ruins history.β
βThe deed is everything, the glory nothing.β
βDas Ewig-Weibliche zieht uns hinan.β
βUntersuchen was ist, und nicht was behagtβ
βI love those who yearn for the impossible.β
βIndividuality of expression is the beginning and end of all art.β
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Quotes by Topic
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Johann Wolfgang von Goethe on Love 5 quotes
βWenn ich dich lieb habe, was geht's dich an?
If I love you, what business is that of yours?β
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe on Time 4 quotes
View all 4 quotes on Time →Johann Wolfgang von Goethe on Life 4 quotes
βSinget nicht in TrauertΓΆnen.
Sing it not in mournful numbers.β
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe on Light 3 quotes
View all 3 quotes on Light →Johann Wolfgang von Goethe on Progress 3 quotes
View all 3 quotes on Progress →Johann Wolfgang von Goethe on Ageing 3 quotes
βDas Alter macht nicht kindisch, wie man spricht, Es findet uns nur noch als wahre Kinder.
Age childish makes, they say, but 'tis not true; We're only genuine children still in Age's season.β
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe on Character 2 quotes
βThe clearest indication of character is what people find laughable.β
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe on Theory 2 quotes
βTheory is in itself of no use, except in so far as it makes us believe in the connection of phenomena.β
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe on Poetry about love 2 quotes
βIn einem Augenblick gewΓ€hrt die Liebe Was MΓΌhe kaum in langer Zeit erreicht.
Love grants in a moment What toil can hardly achieve in an age.β
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe on Palace 2 quotes
βWhen young, one is confident to be able to build palaces for mankind, but when the time comes one has one's hands full just to be able to remove their trash.β
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe on Quran 2 quotes
βOf old the sacred Koran did they cite, They named the verse and chapter ever blest, And each good Mussulman, as was but right, Reverenced, and felt his conscience was at rest. The modern Dervish nothing better knows, But prates of old and new with endless zest; Each day our most admired disorder grows. O sacred Koran! O eternal rest!β
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe on Philosophical pessimism 2 quotes
βIt is as if a curtain had been drawn from before my eyes, and, instead of prospects of eternal life, the abyss of an ever open grave yawned before me. Can we say of anything that it exists when all passes away, when time, with the speed of a storm, carries all things onward,βand our transitory existence, hurried along by the torrent, is either swallowed up by the waves or dashed against the rocks? There is not a moment but preys upon you,βand upon all around you, not a moment in which you do not yourself become a destroyer. The most innocent walk deprives of life thousands of poor insects: one step destroys the fabric of the industrious ant, and converts a little world into chaos. No: it is not the great and rare calamities of the world, the floods which sweep away whole villages, the earthquakes which swallow up our towns, that affect me. My heart is wasted by the thought of that destructive power which lies concealed in every part of universal nature. Nature has formed nothing that does not consume itself, and every object near it: so that, surrounded by earth and air, and all the active powers, I wander on my way with aching heart; and the universe is to me a fearful monster, for ever devouring its own offspring.β
What Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Said About Others
Discover personal opinions Johann Wolfgang von Goethe shared regarding contemporaries.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe on Baruch Spinoza 15 quotes
β[Spinoza] β the philosopher whom I trust most,... [Original in German: Der Philosoph, dem ich zumeist vertraue,...]β
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe on Lord Byron 2 quotes
βLord Byron is great only as a poet; as soon as he reflects, he is a child.β
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe on Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
βWe may use Lichtenbergβs writings as the most wonderful dowsing rod: wherever he makes a joke, there a problem lies hidden.β
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe on Moses
βWho through deserts and wanderings guided the emigrant nations. Yea, I could even believe I were speaking with Joshua or Moses.β
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe on Karl Popper
βThe deepest, the only theme of human history, compared to which all others are of subordinate importance, is the conflict of skepticism with faith.β
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe on Germans
βGermany is dear to my heart. I have often felt a bitter pain at the thought of the German people, which is so respectable in the individual and so miserable in the collective.β
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe on Hafez
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe on Lilith
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe on Thomas Carlyle
βIt is admirable in Carlyle that, in his judgment of our German authors, he has especially in view the mental and moral core as that which is really influential. Carlyle is a moral force of great importance. There is in him much for the future.β
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe on Joseph Louis Lagrange
βThe mathematician is perfect only in so far as he is a perfect being, in so far as he perceives the beauty of truth; only then will his work be thorough, transparent, comprehensive, pure, clear, attractive and even elegant. All this is necessary to resemble Lagrange.β
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe on Michelangelo
βNo one who has not seen the Sistine Chapel can have a clear idea of what a human being can achieve. ... The master's inner security and strength, his greatness is beyond all description. ... At the moment I am so engrossed by Michelangelo that even Nature makes no appeal to me, for my vision is so small compared with his. If there were only some means of fixing such pictures in one's soul!β
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe on Carl Linnaeus
βToday I have been reading LinnΓ© again and am quite unnerved by this extraordinary man. I have learned an infinite amount from him, not just in botany. Outside of Shakespeare and Spinoza, I know of no one who has had such a wrenching effect on me. [Original in German: Dieser Tage habe ich wieder LinnΓ© gelesen und bin ΓΌber diesen auΓerordentlichen Mann erschrocken. Ich habe unendlich viel von ihm gelernt, nur nicht Botanik. AuΓer Shakespeare und Spinoza wΓΌΓte ich nicht, daΓ irgend ein Abgeschiedener eine solche Wirkung auf mich getan.]β
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe on Gotthold Ephraim Lessing
βLessing, who chafed under the sense of various limitations, makes one of his characters say: No one must do anything. A clever pious man said: If a man wills something, he must do it. A third, who was, it is true, an educated man, added: Will follows upon insight. The whole circle of knowledge, will, and necessity was thus believed to have been completed. But, as a rule, a man's knowledge, of whatever kind it may be, determines what he shall do and what he shall leave undone, and so it is that there is no more terrible sight than ignorance in action.β
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe on Nicolaus Copernicus
βOf all discoveries and opinions, none may have exerted a greater effect on the human spirit than the doctrine of Copernicus. The world had scarcely become known as round and complete in itself when it was asked to waive the tremendous privilege of being the center of the universe. Never, perhaps, was a greater demand made on mankind β for by this admission so many things vanished in mist and smoke! What became of our Eden, our world of innocence, piety and poetry; the testimony of the senses; the conviction of a poetic β religious faith? No wonder his contemporaries did not wish to let all this go and offered every possible resistance to a doctrine which in its converts authorized and demanded a freedom of view and greatness of thought so far unknown, indeed not even dreamed of.β
Quotes About Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Gain deeper perspective through quotes about Johann Wolfgang von Goethe from others.
Samuel Butler on Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
βI have been reading a translation of Goethe's Wilhelm Meister. Is it good? To me it seems perhaps the very worst book I ever read. No Englishman could have written such a book. I cannot remember a single good page or idea, and this priggishness is the finest of its kin that I can call to mind. Is it all a practical joke? If it really is Goethe's Wilhelm Meister that I have been reading, I am glad I have never taken the trouble to learn German.β
Fritjof Capra on Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
βHe admired nature's moving order and conceived of form as a pattern of relationships within an organized wholeβa conception that is at the forefront of contemporary systems thinking. "Each creature," wrote Goethe, "is but a patterned gradation of one great harmonious whole.β
Thomas Carlyle on Johann Wolfgang von Goethe 3 quotes
β[I]f I have been delivered from darkness into any measure of light, if I know aught of myself and my duties and destination, it is to the study of your writings more than to any other circumstance that I owe this; it is you more than any other man that I should always thank and reverence with the feeling of a Disciple to his Master, nay of a Son to his Spiritual Father.β
Alan Ebenstein on Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
βGermanic philosophical idealism is also reflected in the work of Johann Goethe, whom Hayek often read as a young man. [...] What Goethe apparently meant is that mind must first have a way of interpreting experience; next, experience is interpreted by mind. Thus, βall that is factual is already theory,β because the way that facts (experience) are interpreted is mentally constructed. There are no atomistic facts in this perspective, because all experience is interpreted.β
George Eliot on Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
βEverywhere he brings us into the presence of living, generous humanityβmixed and erring, and self-deluding, but saved from utter corruption by the salt of some noble impulse, some disinterested effort, some beam of good nature, even though grotesque or homely. And his mode of treatment seems to us precisely that which is really moral in its influence. It is without exaggeration; he is in no haste to alarm readers into virtue by melodramatic consequences; he quietly follows the stream of fact and of life; and waits patiently for the moral processes of nature as we all do for her material processes. The large tolerance of Goethe, which is markedly exhibited in Wilhelm Meister, is precisely that to which we point as the element of moral superiority.β
Patricia Fara on Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
βWhereas Newton had maintained that colours already exist blended together in sunlight, Goethe insisted that they arise from the conjunction of polar oppositesβjust look, he said, at the coloured fringes you see against a sharp black/white edge. ...Many Romantic experimenters (including Samuel Coleridge, an important conduit for Naturphilosophie into Britain) welcomed Goethe's emphasis on polarity, which resonated with their own investigations into magnetic, electrical, and chemical activityβnorth and south, positive and negative, attractive and repulsive. Just as Goethe used his own eye as a recording instrument, they made their own bodies part of electric circuits.β
Nadine Gordimer on Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Friedrich HΓΆlderlin on Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
βI discovered such a treasure house of human nature in a conversation I had with Goethe. It was the most enjoyable moment in my life.β
William James on Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
βBut even the distant reader must allow that Clifford's mental personality belonged to the highest possible type to say no more. The union of the mathematician with the poet, fervor with measure, passion with correctness, this surely is the ideal. And if in these modern days we are to look for any prophet or saviour who shall influence our feelings towards the universe as the founders and renewers of past religions have influenced the minds of our fathers, that prophet, if he ever come, must, like Clifford, be no mere sentimental worshipper of science, but an expert in her ways. And he must have what Clifford had in so extraordinary a degreeβthat lavishly generous confidence in the worthiness of average human nature to be told all truth, the lack of which in Goethe made him an inspiration to the few but a cold riddle to the many.β
Osip Mandelstam THE NINETEENTH CENTURY translated into English on Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
βGoethe and Romain Rolland paint psychological landscapes, depicting both characters and spiritual conditions, but the Japanese-Flaubertian analytical tanka is a form alien to them.β
On Carlyle By Giuseppe Mazzini on Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
John Theodore Merz on Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
βOf Goethe it may be said that he created to a large extent the language and style of that which is best in the modern literature of his country. No such supreme influence belonging to a single individual can probably be found in any other German, French, or English writer in our century...β
Disputed Quotes
Quotes attributed to Johann Wolfgang von Goethe that are questionable.
βI have come to the frightening conclusion that I am the decisive element. It is my personal approach that creates the climate. It is my daily mood that makes the weather. I possess tremendous power to make life miserable or joyous. I can be a tool of torture or an instrument of inspiration, I can humiliate or humor, hurt or heal. In all situations, it is my response that decides whether a crisis is escalated or de-escalated, and a person is humanized or de-humanized. If we treat people as they are, we make them worse. If we treat people as they ought to be, we help them become what they are capable of becoming.β
Misattributed Quotes
Quotes mistakenly credited to Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
βHe is a prophet and not a poet and therefore his Koran is to be seen as Divine Law, and not as a book of a human being made for education or entertainment.β
βThey abandon themselves credulously to every fanatic scoundrel who speaks to their baser qualities, confirms them in their vices, teaches them nationality means barbarism and isolation.β
About Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
What you can do, or dream you can, begin it,