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 happiness of man ... is to have probed what is knowable and quietly to revere what is unknowable.
The most congenial social occasions are those ruled by cheerful deference of each for all.
How can we learn self-knowledge? Never by taking thought but rather by action. Try to do your duty and you'll soon discover what you're like.
One should not wish anyone disagreeable conditions of life; but for him who is involved in them by chance, they are touchstones of characters and of the most decisive value to man.
Everything that frees our spirit without giving us control of ourselves is ruinous.
Begin by instructing yourself, then you will receive instruction from others.
A state of affairs which leads to daily vexation is not the right state.
As man is, so is his God. And thus is God oft strangely odd.
Merely to breathe freely does not mean to live.
Yes! to this thought I hold with firm persistence; The last result of wisdom stamps it true; He only earns his freedom and existence Who daily conquers them anew.
Democracy does not race, it reaches the finish slowly but surely.
If a good person does you wrong, act as though you had not noticed it. If we practice and eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, soon the wholeworld will be blind and toothless.
No one as ever completed their apprenticeship.
They teach in academies far too many things, and far too much that is useless.