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
Whenever I hear people talking about liberal ideas, I am always astounded that men should love to fool themselves with empty sounds. An idea should never be liberal; it must be vigorous, positive, and without loose ends so that it may fulfill its divine mission and be productive.
Children, like dogs, have so sharp and fine a scent that they detect and hunt out everything--the bad before all the rest. They also know well enough how this or that friend stands with their parents; and as they practice no dissimulation whatever, they serve as excellent barometers by which to observe the degree of favor or disfavor at which we stand with their parents.
Divide and rule, a sound motto. Unite and lead, a better one.
Life is the childhood of our immortality.
Man is made by his belief. As he believes, so he is.
Method will teach you to win time.
We can always redeem the man who aspires and strives.
Few people have the imagination for reality.
Each one of us must carry within the proof of immortality, it cannot be given from outside of us. To be sure, everything in natureis change but behind the change there is something eternal.
Everything is both simpler than we can imagine and more entangled than we can conceive.
We must be young to do great things.
Plunge boldly into the thick of life, and seize it where you will, it is always interesting.
There is nothing in which people more betray their character than in what they laugh at.
We must always change, renew, rejuvenate ourselves; otherwise, we harden.