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
Reason looks at necessity as the basis of the world; reason is able to turn chance in your favor and use it. Only by having reasonremain strong and unshakable can we be called a god of the earth.
Pity on the person who has become accustomed to seeing in necessity something arbitrary, who ascribes to the arbitrary some sort of reason, and even claims that following that sort of reason has religious value.
That we understand something perfectly, that we accomplish something better than anyone else around us, that is what matters.
I have never looked at foreign countries or gone there but with the purpose of getting to know the general human qualities that are spread all over the earth in very different forms, and then to find these qualities again in my own country and to recognize and to further them.
Whatever liberates our spirit, without also giving us mastery over ourselves, is destructive.
The safest thing is always to try to convert everything that is in us and around us into action; let the others talk and argue about it as they please.
The one who acts is always without conscience; nobody has a conscience but the contemplative person.
The older I get the more I trust in the law according to which the rose and the lily bloom.
Nature is so perfect that the Trinity couldn't have fashioned her any more perfect. She is an organ on which our Lord plays and the devil works the bellows.
So much has already been said about Shakespeare that there doesn't seem to be anything more to say; yet it is the quality of the spirit that it forever stimulates the spirit.
In politics people throw themselves, as on a sickbed, from one side to the other in the belief they will lie more comfortably.
You don't love if you don't take the beloved's faults for virtues.
Hatred is partial, but love is still more so.
There is no way to face the great advantages of another person than through love.