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
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.
For that is love's nature that it lays claim to exclusive right and that all other claims are nil.
Voluntary dependence is the wonderful form of existence, and how could that be possible without love?
Love, whose power youth feels, is not suitable for the elderly, just as little as anything that presupposes productivity. It is rare that productivity lasts through the years.
By the artist's seizing any one object from nature, that object no longer is part of nature. One can go so far as to say that theartist creates the object in that very moment by emphasizing its significant, characteristic, and interesting aspects or, rather, by adding the higher values.
And we went our separate ways without having understood each other. As in this world nobody understands the other easily.
You can put up with everything in this world except not with a long stretch of beautiful days.
What right those who govern have to govern they don't question, they just govern. Whether the people have a right to depose them that doesn't concern them. All they are concerned with is that the people will not be tempted to depose them.
Normally, the sciences distance themselves from life and the return to it via a detour.
Everything in science depends on what one calls an aperçu, on becoming aware of what is at the bottom of the phenomena. Such becoming aware is infinitely fertile.
If you are convinced of a matter, you must take sides or you don't deserve to succeed.