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
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.
All greatness in the world came about because someone did more than he had to 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.
Knowing is not enough; we must apply. Willing is not enough; we must do.
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.
It is much easier to meet with error than to find truth; error is on the surface, and can be more easily met with; truth is hid in great depths, the way to seek does not appear to all the world.
How happy he who can still hope to lift himself from this sea of error! What we know not, that we are anxious to possess, and cannot use what we know.
He who only tastes his error will long dwell with it, will take delight in it as in a singular felicity; while he who drains it to the dregs will, if he be not crazy, find it to be what it is.