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
I am proud of my heart alone, it is the sole source of everything, all our strenght, happiness & misery. All the knowledge I possess everyone else can acquire, but my heart is all my own
A man's shortcomings are taken from his epoch; his virtues and greatness belong to himself.
I examine my own being, and find there a world, but a world rather of imagination and dim desires, than of distinctness and living power. Then everything swims before my senses, and I smile and dream while pursuing my way through the world.
Whoever strenuously endeavors, him we can rescue.
Publishers are all cohorts of the devil; there must be a special hell for them somewhere.
Character is constructed amidst the tempests of the World
We have time enough if we but use it aright
All that is alive tends toward color, individuality, specificity, effectiveness and opacity. All that is done with life inclines toward knowledge, abstraction, generality transfiguration and transparency.
Man errs, till he has ceased to strive.
To make something you have to be something.
A lot of people do not care about your money until nearly penniless. They also do so with time
The eternal female draws us onward.
Character - in things great and small - is indicated when a man (or person) pursues with sustained follow-through what he feels himself capable of doing.
It is better to be doing the most insignificant thing than to reckon even a half-hour insignificant.