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Johann Wolfgang von Goethe was a German writer and statesman. His works include: four novels; epic and lyric poetry; prose and verse dramas; memoirs; an autobiography; literary and aesthetic criticism; and treatises on botany, anatomy, and colour. In addition, numerous literary and scientific fragments, more than 10,000 letters, and nearly 3,000 drawings by him have survived.

A literary celebrity by the age of 25, Goethe was ennobled by the Duke of Saxe-Weimar, Karl August, in 1782 after taking up residence in Weimar in November 1775 following the success of his first novel, The Sorrows of Young Werther . He was an early participant in the Sturm und Drang literary movement. During his first ten years in Weimar, Goethe became a member of the Duke's privy council, sat on the war and highway commissions, oversaw the reopening of silver mines in nearby Ilmenau, and implemented a series of administrative reforms at the University of Jena. He also contributed to the planning of Weimar's botanical park and the rebuilding of its Ducal Palace.Goethe's first major scientific work, the Metamorphosis of Plants, was published after he returned from a 1788 tour of Italy. In 1791 he was made managing director of the theatre at Weimar, and in 1794 he began a friendship with the dramatist, historian, and philosopher Friedrich Schiller, whose plays he premiered until Schiller's death in 1805. During this period Goethe published his second novel, Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship; the verse epic Hermann and Dorothea, and, in 1808, the first part of his most celebrated drama, Faust. His conversations and various shared undertakings throughout the 1790s with Schiller, Johann Gottlieb Fichte, Johann Gottfried Herder, Alexander von Humboldt, Wilhelm von Humboldt, and August and Friedrich Schlegel have come to be collectively termed Weimar Classicism.

The German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer named Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship one of the four greatest novels ever written, while the American philosopher and essayist Ralph Waldo Emerson selected Goethe as one of six "representative men" in his work of the same name . Goethe's comments and observations form the basis of several biographical works, notably Johann Peter Eckermann's Conversations with Goethe . Wikipedia  

✵ 28. August 1749 – 22. March 1832   •   Other names Johann W. von Goethe, Goethe, Иоганн Вольфганг фон Гёте, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Zitat, Wolfgang von Goethe
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe photo
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe: 185   quotes 30   likes

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Quotes

“The true, prescriptive artist strives after artistic truth; the lawless artist, following blind instinct, after an appearance of naturalness. The one leads to the highest peaks of art, the other to its lowest depths.”

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Propylaea (1798) Introduction

Truth , Art , Nature , Appearance

“Individuality of expression is the beginning and end of all art.”

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Maxim 739, trans. Stopp
Maxims and Reflections (1833)

Art

“There is strong shadow where there is much light.”

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Götz von Berlichingen

Wo viel Licht ist, ist starker Schatten.
Götz von Berlichingen, Act I (1773)

Light , Strong

“Tell me you stones, O speak, you towering palaces!
Streets, say a word! Spirit of this place, are you dumb?
All things are alive in your sacred walls
Eternal Rome, it's only for me all is still.”

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe book Roman Elegies

Elegy 1
Roman Elegies (1789)

“Theories usually result from the precipitate reasoning of an impatient mind which would like to be rid of phenomena and replaces them with images, concepts, indeed often with mere words.”

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Maxim 428, trans. Stopp
Maxims and Reflections (1833)

“Fair I was also, and that was my ruin.”

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe book Faust

Schön war ich auch, und das war mein Verderben.
A Prison
Faust, Part 1 (1808)

“No one would talk much in society, if he knew how often he misunderstands others.”

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe book Elective Affinities

Bk. II, Ch. 4
Elective Affinities (1809)

“I hold to faith in the divine love — which, so many years ago for a brief moment in a little corner of the earth, walked about as a man bearing the name of Jesus Christ — as the foundation on which alone my happiness rests.”

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

(1773), translated by Albert Schweizer in Goethe: Five Studies http://archive.is/tOo5z (1961), Beacon Press, p. 53

Love , Faith , Christ , Happiness

“A teacher who can arouse a feeling for one single good action, for one single good poem, accomplishes more than he who fills our memory with rows on rows of natural objects, classified with name and form.”

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe book Elective Affinities

Bk. II, Ch. 7
Elective Affinities (1809)

Teachers' Day , Feeling , Nature , Teachers

“Let the noble man
Be generous and good,
Tirelessly achieving
What is just and useful:
Let him be a model
For those beings whom he surmises.”

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Das Göttliche

Das Göttliche (The Divine) (1783)

“All poetry is supposed to be instructive but in an unnoticeable manner; it is supposed to make us aware of what it would be valuable to instruct ourselves in; we must deduce the lesson on our own, just as with life.”

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Letter to Carl Friedrich Zelter (26 November 1825)

Life

“The artist may be well advised to keep his work to himself till it is completed, because no one can readily help him or advise him with it…but the scientist is wiser not to withhold a single finding or a single conjecture from publicity.”

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Essay on Experimentation

Help

“A useless life is an early death.”

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Iphigenia in Tauris

Ein unnütz Leben ist ein früher Tod...
Act I, sc. ii
Iphigenie auf Tauris (1787)

Life , Death

“In limitations he first shows himself the master,
And the law can only bring us freedom.”

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Was Wir Bringen (1802)

Law , Freedom

“However often we turn to it [the Qur'an] at first disgusting us each time afresh, it soon attracts, astounds, and in the end enforces our reverence… Its style, in accordance with its contents and aim is stern, grand, terrible — ever and anon truly sublime — Thus this book will go on exercising through all ages a most potent influence.”

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, quoted in Dictionary of Islam (1895), by T.P. Hughes, p. 526

Books , Age , Exercises , Time

“Hypotheses are scaffoldings erected in front of a building and then dismantled when the building is finished. They are indispensable for the workman; but you mustn't mistake the scaffolding for the building.”

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Maxim 1222, trans. Stopp
Maxims and Reflections (1833)

“My son, whoever wishes to keep a secret, must hide from us that he possesses one. Self complaisance over the concealed destroys its concealment.”

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Bk. I, Ch. 5 http://books.google.com/books?id=q4JKAAAAYAAJ&q=%22Whoever+wishes+to+keep+a+secret+must+hide+from+us+that+he+possesses+one%22&pg=PA73#v=onepage
Wilhelm Meister's Wanderjahre (Journeyman Years) (1821–1829)

Secret

“Everything that liberates our mind without at the same time imparting self-control is pernicious.”

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Maxim 504, trans. Stopp
Variant translation: Everything that emancipates the spirit without giving us control over ourselves is harmful.
Maxims and Reflections (1833)

Time

“The deed is everything, the glory nothing.”

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe book Faust

Act IV, A High Mountain Range
Faust, Part 2 (1832)

“Modern poets put a lot of water into their ink.”

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Neuere Poeten tun viel Wasser in die Tinte.
Maxim 749, trans. Stopp
Variant translation: Modern poets mix a lot of water with their ink.
Maxims and Reflections (1833)

Water

“The Eternal Feminine draws us on.”

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe book Faust

Das Ewig-Weibliche zieht uns hinan.
Act V, Heaven, last line
Faust, Part 2 (1832)

Drawing

“I love those who yearn for the impossible.”

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe book Faust

Act II, Classical Walpurgis Night
Faust, Part 2 (1832)

Love

“They abandon themselves credulously to every fanatic scoundrel who speaks to their baser qualities, confirms them in their vices, teaches them nationality means barbarism and isolation.”

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Attributed to Goethe by German novelist Thomas Mann in his novel The Beloved Returns. The line was Mann's invention, though it was later quoted during the Nuremburg trials by prosecutor Sir Hartley Shawcross, who quoted the passage as if it truly had been written by Goethe.
Misattributed
Source: http://hdl.handle.net/2027/spo.act2080.0051.419 Thomas Mann in America

“Should I not be proud, when for twenty years I have had to admit to myself that the great Newton and all the mathematicians and noble calculators along with him were involved in a decisive error with respect to the doctrine of color, and that I among millions was the only one who knew what was right in this great subject of nature?”

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Letter to Eckermann (30 December 1823)

Color , Error , Nature , Decision

“All perishable is but an allegory.”

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe book Faust

Alles Vergängliche ist nur ein Gleichnis.
Variant translation: All that is transitory is but a metaphor.
Act V, Chorus mysticus, last sentence, immediately before:
Faust, Part 2 (1832)

“Scientific knowledge helps us mainly because it makes the wonder to which we are called by nature rather more intelligible.”

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Die Wissenschaft hilft uns vor allem, daß sie das Staunen, wozu wir von Natur berufen find.
Maxim 417, trans. Stopp
Maxims and Reflections (1833)

Intelligence , Nature , Knowledge , Help

“Pleasure and love are the pinions of great deeds.”

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Iphigenia in Tauris

Act II, sc. i
Iphigenie auf Tauris (1787)

Love , Pleasure

“Three things are to be looked to in a building: that it stand on the right spot; that it be securely founded; that it be successfully executed.”

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe book Elective Affinities

Bk. I, Ch. 9
Elective Affinities (1809)

“Young Schopenhauer, a zealous and thorough-going Kantian, tried to explain that light would cease to exist along with the seeing eye. "What!" he said, according to Schopenhauer's own report, "looking at him with his Jove-like eyes,"—"You should rather say that you would not exist if the light could not see you?"”

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

As quoted by Friedrich Jodl, "Goethe and Kant," The Monist (1901) f. , ed. Paul Carus, Vol. 11, p. 264 https://books.google.com/books?id=gnQKAQAAMAAJ&pg=PA264. As translated from Professor Jodl's MS. by W. H. Carruth, of the University of Kansas.

Light

“It is as certain as it is marvelous that truth and error come from one source. Therefore one often may not injure error, because at the same time one injures truth.”

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Es ist so gewiß als wunderbar, daß Wahrheit und Irrthum aus Einer Quelle entstehen; deßwegen man oft dem Irrthum nicht schaden darf, weil man zugleich der Wahrheit schadet.
Maxims and Reflections (1833)

Truth , Error , Time

“Is it so big a mystery
what god and man and world are?
No! but nobody knows how to solve it
so the mystery hangs on.”

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

As translated by Jerome Rothenberg
Venetian Epigrams (1790)

God , World

“We can't form our children on our own concepts; we must take them and love them as God gives them to us.”

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Hermann and Dorothea

Hermann und Dorothea (1797)

Love , God , Children

“Two souls alas! dwell in my breast.”

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe book Faust

Zwey Seelen wohnen, ach! in meiner Brust.
Outside the Gate of the Town
Faust, Part 1 (1808)

Soul

“A thinking man's greatest happiness is to have fathomed what can be fathomed and to revere in silence what cannot be fathomed.”

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Maxim 1207, trans. Stopp
Variant translation: The greatest happiness for the thinking man is to have fathomed the fathomable, and to quietly revere the unfathomable.
Maxims and Reflections (1833)

Thinking , Silence , Happiness

“Man errs as long as he strives.”

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe book Faust

Es irrt der Mensch, so lang er strebt.
Variant translation: Man will err while yet he strives.
Prologue in Heaven
Faust, Part 1 (1808)

“One lives but once in the world.”

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe book Clavigo

Clavigo, Act I, sc. i (1774)

World

“Ah, how often I've cursed those foolish pages,
That showed my youthful sufferings to everyone!
If Werther had been my brother, and I'd killed him,
His sad ghost could hardly have persecuted me more.”

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe book Roman Elegies

Elegy 2 (First version)
Roman Elegies (1789)

Youth , Sadness , Suffering

“Much there is I can stand, and most things not easy to suffer
I bear with quiet resolve, just as a god commands it.
Only a few I find as repugnant as snakes and poison —
These four: tobacco smoke, bedbugs, garlic, and †.”

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Variant translation: Lots of things I can stomach. Most of what irks me
I take in my stride, as a god might command me.
But four things I hate more than poisons & vipers:
tobacco smoke, garlic, bedbugs, and Christ.
Epigram 67, as translated by Jerome Rothenberg
Venetian Epigrams (1790)
Variant: Much there is I can stand, and most things not easy to suffer
I bear with quiet resolve, just as a god commands it.
Only a few I find as repugnant as snakes and poison —
These four: tobacco smoke, bedbugs, garlic, and †.

God , Suffering , Christ

“One says a lot in vain, refusing;
The other mainly hears the "No."”

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Iphigenia in Tauris

Act I, sc. iii
Iphigenie auf Tauris (1787)

“America, you have it better than our continent, the old one.”

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Amerika, du hast es besser—als unser Kontinent, der alte.
Wendts Musen-Almanach (1831)

“The architect hands over to the rich man with the keys to his palace all the ease and comfort to be found in it without being able to enjoy any of it himself. Must the artist not in this way gradually become alienated from his art, since his work, like a child that has been provided for and left home, can no longer have any effect upon its father? And how beneficial it must have been for art when it was intended to be concerned almost exclusively with what was public property, and belonged to everybody and therefore also to the artist!”

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe book Elective Affinities

Dem Reichen übergibt der Baumeister mit dem Schlüssel des Palastes alle Bequemlichkeit und Behäbigkeit, ohne irgend etwas davon mitzugenießen. Muß sich nicht allgemach auf diese Weise die Kunst von dem Künstler entfernen, wenn das Werk wie ein ausgestattetes Kind nicht mehr auf den Vater zurückwirkt? Und wie sehr mußte die Kunst sich selbst befördern, als sie fast allein mit dem öffentlichen, mit dem, was allen und also auch dem Künstler gehörte, sich zu beschäftigen bestimmt war!
Bk. II, Ch. 3, R. J. Hollingdale, trans. (1971), p. 170
Elective Affinities (1809)

Art , Way , Home

“As great, everlasting,
Adamantine laws
Dictate, we must all
Complete the cycles
Of our existence.”

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Das Göttliche

Das Göttliche (The Divine) (1783)

Law

“There are occasions … when all consolation is base and it is a duty to despair.”

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe book Elective Affinities

Es gibt Fälle, ... wo jeder Trost niederträchtig und Verzweiflung Pflicht ist.
Bk. I, Ch. 18, R. J. Hollingdale, trans. (1971), p. 147
Elective Affinities (1809)

Despair

“You ask which form of government is the best? Whichever teaches us to govern ourselves.”

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Welche Regierung die beste sei? Diejenige, die uns lehrt, uns selbst zu regieren.
Maxim 353, trans. Stopp
Variant translation by Saunders: Which is the best government? That which teaches us to govern ourselves. (225)
Maxims and Reflections (1833)

“One of the most striking signs of the decay of art is the intermixing of different genres.”

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Propylaea (1798) Introduction

Art

“I have often felt a bitter sorrow at the thought of the German people, which is so estimable in the individual and so wretched in the generality. A comparison of the German people with other peoples arouses a painful feeling, which I try to overcome in every possible way.”

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Goethes Gespraeche (December 13, 1813)

Pain , People , Way , Feeling

“All intelligent thoughts have already been thought;
what is necessary is only to try to think them again.”

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Alles Gescheite ist schon gedacht worden.
Man muss nur versuchen, es noch einmal zu denken.
Bk. II, Observations in the Mindset of the Wanderer: Art, Ethics, Nature
Wilhelm Meister's Wanderjahre (Journeyman Years) (1821–1829)
Variant: All truly wise thoughts have been thoughts already thousands of times; but to make them truly ours, we must think them over again honestly, till they take root in our personal experience.

Intelligence , Thinking

“There is no outward mark of politeness that does not have a profound moral reason. The right education would be that which taught the outward mark and the moral reason together.”

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe book Elective Affinities

Es gibt kein äußeres Zeichen der Höflichkeit, das nicht einen tiefen sittlichen Grund hätte. Die rechte Erziehung wäre, welche dieses Zeichen und den Grund zugleich überlieferte.
Bk. II, Ch. 5, R. J. Hollingdale, trans. (1971), p. 195
Elective Affinities (1809)

Education

“Who strives always to the utmost,
For him there is salvation.”

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe book Faust

Wer immer strebend sich bemüht,
Den können wir erlösen.
Act V, Mountain Gorges
Faust, Part 2 (1832)