Johann Wolfgang von Goethe: Timing

“Not to keep from error, is the duty of the educator of men, but to guide the erring one, even to let him swill his error out of full cups — that is the wisdom of teachers. Whoever merely tastes of his error, will keep house with it for a long time, … but whoever drains it completely will have to get to know it.”

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Nicht vor Irrthum zu bewahren, ist die Pflicht des Menschen erziehers; sondern den Irrenden zu leiten, ja ihn seinen Irrthum aus vollen Bechern ausschlürfen zu lassen, das ist Weisheit der Lehrer. Wer seinen Irrthum nur kostet, hält lange damit Haus; er freuet sich dessen als eines seltenen Glücks; aber wer ihn ganz erschöpft, der muß ihn kennenlernen.
Bk. VII, Ch. 9
Wilhelm Meister's Lehrjahre (Apprenticeship) (1786–1830)

Wisdom , Men , Education , Error

“As many languages you know, as many times you are a human being.”

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Also attributed to Charles V.
Attributed

Time

“I am more and more convinced that poetry is the universal possession of mankind, revealing itself everywhere and at all times in hundreds and hundreds of men. … I therefore like to look about me in foreign nations, and advise everyone to do the same. National literature is now a rather unmeaning term; the epoch of world literature is at hand, and everyone must strive to hasten its approach.”

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Conversations with Eckermann (entry for 31 January 1827)

Time , Universe , Literature , World

“Let us live in as small a circle as we will, we are either debtors or creditors before we have had time to look round.”

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe book Elective Affinities

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

Time

“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

“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

“Smoking stupefies a man, and makes him incapable of thinking or writing. It is only fit for idlers, people who are always bored, who sleep for a third of their lifetime, fritter away another third in eating, drinking, and other necessary or unnecessary affairs, and don’t know—though they are always complaining that life is so short—what to do with the rest of their time. Such lazy Turks find mental solace in handling a pipe and gazing at the clouds of smoke that they puff into the air; it helps them to kill time. Smoking induces drinking beer, for hot mouths need to be cooled down. Beer thickens the blood, and adds to the intoxication produced by the narcotic smoke. The nerves are dulled and the blood clotted. If they go on as they seem to be doing now, in two or three generations we shall see what these beer-swillers and smoke-puffers have made of Germany. You will notice the effect on our literature—mindless, formless, and hopeless; and those very people will wonder how it has come about. And think of the cost of it all! Fully 25,000,000 thalers a year end in smoke all over Germany, and the sum may rise to forty, fifty, or sixty millions. The hungry are still unfed, and the naked unclad. What can become of all the money? Smoking, too, is gross rudeness and unsociability. Smokers poison the air far and wide and choke every decent man, unless he takes to smoking in self-defence. Who can enter a smoker’s room without feeling ill? Who can stay there without perishing?”

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Heinrich Luden, Rueckblicke in mein Leben, Jena 1847
Attributed

Life , Money , People , Feeling

“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

“Everything is simpler than one can imagine, at the same time more involved than can be comprehended.”

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Alles ist einfacher, als man denken kann, zugleich verschränkter, als zu begreifen ist.
Maxim 1209, trans. Stopp
Variant translation: Everything is simpler than we can imagine, at the same time more complex and intertwined than can be comprehended.
Maxims and Reflections (1833)

Imagination , Time

“Someone has said that world history must from time to time be rewritten. When has there been an epoch that made this as necessary as does the present one? You provided a superb example of how it should be done. The hatred of the Romans for the victor, even when he was kindly, presumption upon outmoded privileges, the desire for a different state of affairs without having anything better in view, irrational hopes, haphazard undertakings, alliances with no prospect of benefit, and whatever else is the unhappy retinue of such times—you have described all that magnificently, proving to us that such things really happened in those days.”

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

As quoted by Karl Löwith, From Hegel to Nietzsche: The Revolution in Nineteenth Century Thought (1991) from a letter referring to Sartorius' historical study of the rule of the Ostragoths in Italy

World , Hope , History , Time

“The ever-changing display of plant forms, which I have followed for so many years, awakens increasingly within me the notion: The plant forms which surround us were not all created at some given point in time and then locked into the given form, they have been given… a felicitous mobility and plasticity that allows them to grow and adapt themselves to many different conditions in many different places. …How they can be brought together under one concept has slowly become clear to me and that this conception can be enlivened at a higher level [of consciousness]: thus I began to recognize, in the sense perceptible form, a supersensible archetype. Whoever has felt what a rich, saturated thought… has to say, will admit what a passionate movement comes to life in the spirit when we are enthused, and we anticipate the totality of what will evolve step by step…”

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Goethe's Story of My Botanical Studies (1831) attributed by Frank Teichmann (tr. Jon McAlice) "The Emergence of the Idea of Evolution in the Time of Goethe" http://www.waldorfresearchinstitute.org/pdf/BAIdeaEvolTeich.pdf
Attributed

Life , Sense , Passion , Change

“When young, one is confident to be able to build palaces for mankind, but when the time comes one has one's hands full just to be able to remove their trash.”

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Letter to Johann Kaspar Lavatar (6 March 1780)

Confidence , Time

“Nowhere would anyone grant that science and poetry can be united. They forgot that science arose from poetry, and failed to see that a change of times might beneficently reunite the two as friends, at a higher level and to mutual advantage.”

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Von andern Seiten her vernahm ich ähnliche Klänge, nirgends wollte man zugeben, daß Wissenschaft und Poesie vereinbar seien. Man vergaß, daß Wissenschaft sich aus Poesie entwickelt habe, man bedachte nicht, daß, nach einem Umschwung von Zeiten, beide sich wieder freundlich, zu beiderseitigem Vorteil, auf höherer Stelle, gar wohl wieder begegnen könnten.
Zur Morphologie (On Morphology), (1817)

Science , Change , Time

“The child’s desire to have distinctions made in his ideas grew stronger every day. Having learned that things had names, he wished to hear the name of every thing supposing that there could be nothing which his father did not know. He often teased him with his questions, and caused him to inquire concerning objects which, but for this, he would have passed without notice. Our innate tendency to pry into the origin and end of things was likewise soon developed in the boy. When he asked whence came the wind, and whither went the flame, his father for the first time truly felt the limitation of his own powers, and wished to understand how far man may venture with his thoughts, and what things he may hope ever to give account of to himself or others. The anger of the child, when he saw injustice done to any living thing, was extremely grateful to the father, as the symptom of a generous heart. Felix once struck fiercely at the cook for cutting up some pigeons. The fine impression this produced on Wilhelm was, indeed, erelong disturbed, when he found the boy unmercifully tearing sparrows in pieces and beating frogs to death. This trait reminded him of many men, who appear so scrupulously just when without passion, and witnessing the proceedings of other men. The pleasant feeling, that the boy was producing so fine and wholesome an influence on his being, was, in a short time, troubled for a moment, when our friend observed, that in truth the boy was educating him more than he the boy.”

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Book VIII – Chapter 1
Wilhelm Meister's Wanderjahre (Journeyman Years) (1821–1829)

Time , Cooking , Anger , Understanding