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
Daring ideas are like chessmen moved forward. They may be beaten, but they may start a winning game.
Experiments are mediators between nature and idea.
The mark of highest originality lies in the ability to develop a familiar idea so fruitfully that it would seem no one else would ever have discovered so much to be hidden in it.
Every great idea exerts, on first appearing, a tyrannical influence: Hence, the advantages it brings are turned all too soon into disadvantages.
Everything has been thought of before, but the problem is to think of it again.
With the growth of knowledge our ideas must from time to time be organized afresh. The change takes place usually in accordance with new maxims as they arise, but it always remains provisional.
When she sees the leaves fall, they raise no other idea in her mind than that winter is approaching.
Whoso shrinks from ideas ends by having nothing but sensations.
Every idea appears at first as a strange visitor, and when it begins to be realized, it is hardly distinguishable from fantasy.
When an idea is wanting, a word can always be found to take its place.
Every man must form himself as a particular being, seeking, however, to attain that general idea of which all mankind are constituents.
All of us have life; few of us have an idea of it.
Very few people love others for what they are; rather, they love what they lend them, their own selves, their own idea of them.
There are but few who have ideas and are, at the same time, capable of action. Ideas enlarge but stymie, action enlivens but confines.