Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Quotes page 2

“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.”

Der umgang mit frauen ist das element guter sitten.
Maxim 31, trans. Stopp
Variant translation: The society of women is the foundation of good manners.
Variant translative: Intercourse with women is the element of good manners.
Maxims and Reflections (1833)

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

Propylaea (1798) Introduction

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

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

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Götz von Berlichingen

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

“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.”

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

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

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

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

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.”

“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.”

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

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe book Elective Affinities

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

“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.”

“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.”

Letter to Carl Friedrich Zelter (26 November 1825)

“A useless life is an early death.”

Essay on Experimentation

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

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

“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.”

Was Wir Bringen (1802)

“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, quoted in Dictionary of Islam (1895), by T.P. Hughes, p. 526

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

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

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

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 <br class="br">Wilhelm Meister's Wanderjahre (Journeyman Years) (1821–1829)

“The deed is everything, the glory nothing.”

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

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

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

“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.”

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)

“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?”

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. <br class="br">Misattributed <br class="br">Source: http://hdl.handle.net/2027/spo.act2080.0051.419 Thomas Mann in America

“All perishable is but an allegory.”

Letter to Eckermann (30 December 1823)

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

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)

“Seeking with the soul the land of the Greeks.”

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

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

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

“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.”

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

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?"”

“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.”

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.

“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.”

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)

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

As translated by Jerome Rothenberg
Venetian Epigrams (1790)

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Hermann and Dorothea

Hermann und Dorothea (1797)

“Two souls alas! dwell in my breast.”

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

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

“Man errs as long as he strives.”

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)

“One lives but once in the world.”

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

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe book Clavigo

Clavigo, Act I, sc. i (1774)

“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)

“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 †.”

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

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 †.

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

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

“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!”

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

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)

“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)

“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)

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

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

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)

“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.”

Propylaea (1798) Introduction

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

Goethes Gespraeche (December 13, 1813)