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 decline of literature indicates the decline of a nation.
A man who cannot command himself will always be a slave.
It is always a sign of an unproductive time when it concerns itself with petty and technical aspects [in philology], and likewiseit is a sign of an unproductive person to pursue such trifles.
What one doesn't understand one doesn't possess.
I will be lord over myself.
Love of truth shows itself in this, that a man knows how to find and value the good in everything.
All of us, just because we are able to talk, also believe we are able to talk about language.
Character calls forth character.
All is born of water; all is sustained by water.
Not all that is presented to us as history has really happened; and what really happened did not actually happen the way it is presented to us; moreover, what really happened is only a small part of all that happened. Everything in history remains uncertain, the largest events as well as the smallest occurrence.
Nature! We live in her midst and know her not. She is incessantly speaking to us, but betrays not her secret. We constantly act upon her, and yet have no power over her. Variant: NATURE! We are surrounded and embraced by her: powerless to separate ourselves from her, and powerless to penetrate beyond her.
Such is the frailty of man that even where he makes the truest and most forcible impression in the memory, in the heart of his beloved, there also he must perish.
Someday perhaps the inner light will shine forth from us, and the we'll need no other light.
Alas! how much there is in education, and in our social institutions, to prepare us and our children for insanity.