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
The highest problem of every art is, by means of appearances, to produce the illusion of a loftier reality
At bottom, no real object is unpoetical, if the poet knows how to use it properly.
The real scholar learns how to evolve the unknown from the known, and draws near the master.
The more one knows, the more one comprehends, the more one realizes that everything turns in a circle.
What I possess, seems far away to me, and what is gone becomes reality.
The biggest problem with every art is by the use of appearance to create a loftier reality.
The highest problem of any art is to cause by appearance the illusion of a higher reality.
The soul is indestructible and its activity will continue through eternity. It is like the sun, which, to our eyes, seems to set at night; but it has in reality only gone to diffuse its light elsewhere.
The proper place for liberality is in the realm of the emotions.
He who does not see the whole world in his friends, does not deserve that the world should hear of him.
As in Rome there is, apart from the Romans, a population of statues, so apart from this real world there is a world of illusion, almost more potent, in which most men live.
Few men have imagination enough for reality.
Toleration ought in reality to be merely a transitory mood. It must lead to recognition. To tolerate is to affront.
The clever reader who is capable or reading between these lines what does not stand written in them but is nevertheless implied will be able to form some conception.