“Among all peoples, the Greeks have dreamt life's dream most beautifully.”

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Unter allen Völkerschaften haben die Griechen den Traum des Lebens am schönsten geträumt.
Maxim 298, trans. Stopp
Variant translation by Saunders: Of all peoples the Greeks have dreamt the dream of life the best. (189)
Maxims and Reflections (1833)

Original

Unter allen Völkerschaften haben die Griechen den Traum des Lebens am schönsten geträumt.

Maxims and Reflections (1833)

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Among all peoples, the Greeks have dreamt life's dream most beautifully." by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe?

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe 185

German writer, artist, and politician 1749–1832

Related quotes

“You seem to have dreamt on the white stone, in the midst of the people of dreams, since you dreamt so long a dream in the course of so short a night.”

Anatole France (1844–1924) French writer

Source: The White Stone (1905), Ch. VI, p. 237

“No nobler dream was ever dreamt. It is surely nobler to be a victim of the most noble dream than to profit from a sordid reality and to wallow in it.”

Leo Strauss (1899–1973) Classical philosophy specialist and father of neoconservativism

Commenting upon the Aleinu prayer, in "Why We Remain Jews" (1962)
Context: The kingdom is Yours, and You will reign in glory for all eternity. As it is written in Your Torah: "The Lord shall reign for ever and ever." And it is said: " And the Lord shall be King over all the earth: on that day the Lord shall be One, and His name One."
No nobler dream was ever dreamt. It is surely nobler to be a victim of the most noble dream than to profit from a sordid reality and to wallow in it. Dream is akin to aspiration. And aspiration is a kind of divination of an enigmatic vision. And an enigmatic vision in the emphatic sense is the perception of the ultimate mystery, of the truth of the ultimate mystery. The truth of the ultimate mystery — the truth that there is an ultimate mystery, that being is radically mysterious — cannot be denied even by the unbelieving Jew of our age. That unbelieving Jew of our age, if he has any education, is ordinarily a positivist, a believer in Science, if not a positivist without any education.