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
A true German can't stand the French, Yet willingly he drinks their wines.
Thus I reel from desire to fulfillment and in fulfillment languish for desire.
But the valid issue is the extent to which man knows how to form and master the material at his command.
The soul-stirring image of death is no bugbear to the sage, and is looked on without despair by the pious. It teaches the former to live, and it strengthens the hopes of the latter in salvation in the midst of distress. Death is new life to both.
Perseverance is a silent power that grows irresistibly greater with time.
It is bad governments, not bad people, who cause revolutions.
It is a misfortune to pass at once from observation to conclusion, and to regard both as of equal value; but it befalls many a student.
Man knows himself only insofar as he knows the world, becoming aware of it if only within himself, and of himself self only within it. Each new subject, well observed, opens up within us a new organ of thought.
The nude is the perfect expression of freedom. Freedom to be.
What is the path? There is no path. On into the unknown.
Only the heart without a stain knows ease.
Art is a mediator of the unspeakable.
What must the English and French think of the language of our philosophers when we Germans do not understand it ourselves?
Those only obtain love, for the most part, who seek it not.