Johann Wolfgang von Goethe: Use

“The person born with a talent they are meant to use will find their greatest happiness in using it.”

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Personality , Happiness

“All Nine often used to come to me, I mean the Muses:
But I ignored them: my girl was in my arms.
Now I’ve left my sweetheart: and they’ve left me,
And I roll my eyes, seeking a knife or rope.
But Heaven is full of gods: You came to aid me:
Greetings, Boredom, mother of the Muse.”

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Epigram 27
Venetian Epigrams (1790)

God , Girl

“Life teaches us to be less harsh with ourselves and with others.”

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Iphigenia in Tauris

Act IV, sc. iv
Iphigenie auf Tauris (1787)

Life

“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

“The world is so empty if one thinks only of mountains, rivers and cities; but to know someone here and there who thinks and feels with us, and though distant, is close to us in spirit — this makes the earth for us an inhabited garden.”

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe book Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship

Die Welt ist so leer, wenn man nur Berge, Flüsse und Städte darin denkt, aber hie und da jemand zu wissen, der mit uns übereinstimmt, mit dem wir auch stillschweigend fortleben, das macht uns dieses Erdenrund erst zu einem bewohnten Garten.
"Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre," in Goethes Sämmtliche Werke, vol. 7 (Stuttgart: J. G. Cotta, 1874), p. 520
Wilhelm Meister's Lehrjahre (Apprenticeship) (1786–1830)

World , Feeling , Mountain , Thinking

“Beloved, don't fret that you gave yourself so quickly!
Believe me, I don't think badly or wrongly of you.
The arrows of Love are various: some scratch us,
And our hearts suffer for years from their slow poison.
But others strong-feathered with freshly sharpened points
Pierce to the marrow, and quickly inflame the blood.
In the heroic ages, when gods and goddesses loved,
Desire followed a look, and joy followed desire.”

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe book Roman Elegies

Elegy 3
Roman Elegies (1789)

Love , God , Age , Thinking

“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

“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

“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

“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

“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

“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

“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

“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)

“Truth is contrary to our nature, not so error, and this for a very simple reason; truth demands that we should recognize ourselves as limited, error flatters us that, in one way or another, we are unlimited.”

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Die Wahrheit widerspricht unserer Natur, der Irrthum nicht, und zwar aus einem sehr einfachen Grunde: die Wahrheit fordert, daß wir uns für beschränkt erkennen follen, der Irrthum schmeichelt uns. wir seien auf ein- oder die andere Weise unbegränzt.
Maxim 310, trans. Stopp
Maxims and Reflections (1833)

Truth , Way , Error , Nature

“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

“To know of someone here and there whom we accord with, who is living on with us, even in silence — this makes our earthly ball a peopled garden.”

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Bk. VII, Ch. 5
Wilhelm Meister's Lehrjahre (Apprenticeship) (1786–1830)

People , Silence

“Art is long, life short, judgment difficult, opportunity transient. To act is easy, to think is hard; to act according to our thought is troublesome. Every beginning is cheerful: the threshold is the place of expectation. The boy stands astonished, his impressions guide him: he learns sportfully, seriousness comes on him by surprise. Imitation is born with us: what should be imitated is not easy to discover. The excellent is rarely found, more rarely valued. The height charms us, the steps to it do not: with the summit in our eye, we love to walk along the plain. It is but a part of art that can be taught: the artist needs it all. Who knows it half, speaks much, and is always wrong: who knows it wholly, inclines to act, and speaks seldom or late. The former have no secrets and no force : the instruction they can give is like baked bread, savory and satisfying for a single day; but flour cannot be sown, and seed-corn ought not to be ground. Words are good, but they are not the best. The best is not to be explained by words. The spirit in which we act is the highest matter. Action can be understood and again represented by the spirit alone. No one knows what he is doing while he acts aright, but of what is wrong we are always conscious. Whoever works with symbols only is a pedant, a hypocrite, or a bungler. There are many such, and they like to be together. Their babbling detains the scholar: their obstinate mediocrity vexes even the best. The instruction which the true artist gives us opens the mind; for, where words fail him, deeds speak. The true scholar learns from the known to unfold the unknown, and approaches more and more to being a master.”

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Book VII Chapter IX
Wilhelm Meister's Wanderjahre (Journeyman Years) (1821–1829)

Learning , Boy , Art , Thinking