Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Johann WolfgangGoethetə/; German: ; 28 August 1749 – 22 March 1832) was a German writer and statesman. His body of work includes epic and lyric poetry written in a variety of metres and styles; prose and verse dramas; memoirs; an autobiography; literary and aesthetic criticism; treatises on botany, anatomy, and colour; and four novels. In addition, numerous literary and scientific fragments, more than 10,000 letters, and nearly 3,000 drawings by him exist...
NationalityGerman
ProfessionPoet
Date of Birth28 August 1749
CountryGermany
Shakespeare is a great psychologist, and whatever can be known of the heart of man may be found in his plays.
Forget not that the man who cannot enjoy his own natural gifts in silence, and find his reward in the exercise of them, will generally find himself badly off.
The rose is wont with pride to swell, and ever seeks to rise.
Pain and pleasure, good and evil, come to us from unexpected sources. It is not there where we have gathered up our brightest hopes, that the dawn of happiness breaks. It is not there where we have glanced our eye with affright, that we find the deadliest gloom. What should this teach us? To bow to the great and only Source of light, and live humbly and with confiding resignation.
Prudent and active men, who know their strength and use it with limit and circumspection, alone go far in the affairs of the world.
Originality provokes originality.
What have the Germans gained by their boasted freedom of the press, except the liberty of abusing each other as they like?
All lyrical work must, as a whole, be perfectly intelligible, but in some particulars a little unintelligible.
What makes poetry? A full heart, brimful of one noble passion.
The passions are like those demons with which Afrasahiab sailed down the Orus. Our only safety consists in keeping them asleep. If they we are lost.
Passions are defects or virtues in the highest power.
Great passions are incurable diseases.
This world could not exist if it were not so simple. The ground has been tilled a thousand years, yet its powers remain ever the same; a little rain, a little sun, and each spring it grows green again.
To blow is not to play on the flute; you must move the fingers. [Ger., Blasen ist nicht floten, ihr musst die Finger bewegen.]