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
I can promise to be sincere, but not to be impartial
I can promise to be frank, I cannot promise to be impartial.
The highest problem of every art is, by means of appearances, to produce the illusion of a loftier reality
The highest happiness of man is to have probed what is knowable and quietly to revere what is unknowable.
The greatest genius will never be worth much if he pretends to draw exclusively from his own resources.
All truly wise thoughts have been thoughts already thousands of times; but to make them truly ours, we must think them over again honestly, till they take root in our personal experience.
All that is transitory is only an image.
The first and last thing required of genius is the love of truth.
The first and last thing required of genius is, love of the truth.
Knowing is not enough; we must apply. Willing is not enough; we must do.
The destiny of any nation at any given time depends on the opinions of its young men under five-and-twenty
All the knowledge I possess everyone else can acquire, but my heart is exclusively my own.
Woe to falsehood! it affords no relief to the breast, like truth; it gives us no comfort, pains him who forges it, and like an arrow directed by a god flies back and wounds the archer.
Faith is a homely, private capital; as there are public savings-banks and poor funds, out of which in times of want we can relieve the necessities of individuals, so here the faithful take their coin in peace.