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
English plays, Atrocious in content, Absurd in form, Objectionable in action, Execrable EnglishTheatre.
You shall abstain, shall abstain. That is the eternal song.
I had rather be Mercury, the smallest among seven [planets], revolving round the sun, than the first among five [moons] revolving round Saturn.
There is no outward sign of true courtesy that does not rest on a deep moral foundation.
A human being needs only a small plot of ground on which to be happy, and even less to lie beneath.
When the boy begins to understand that the visible point is preceded by an invisible point, that the shortest distance between two points is conceived as a straight line before it is ever drawn with pencil and paper...the fountain of all thought has been opened to him...the philosopher can reveal him nothing new, as a geometrician he has discovered the basis of all thought.
My counsel is, to force nothing, and rather to trifle and sleep away all unproductive days and hours, than on such days to compose something that will afterwards give no pleasure.
Mozart is a human incarnation of the divine force of creation.
He who possesses science and art, Possesses religion as well; He who possesses neither of these, Had better have religion.
Microscopes and telescopes really confuse our minds.
The arts are the salt of the earth; as salt relates to food, the arts relate to technology.
Experiments are mediators between nature and idea.
In all times it is only individuals that have advanced science, not the age.
Hypotheses are the scaffolds which are erected in front of a building and removedd when the building is completed. They are indispensable to the worker; but the worker must not mistake the scaffolding for the building.