Goethe Wolfgang
A master of poetry, drama, and the novel, German writer and scientist Johann Wolfgang von Goethe spent 50 years on his two-part dramatic poem
Faust
, published in 1808 and 1832, also conducted scientific research in various fields, notably botany, and held several governmental positions.
George Eliot called him "Germany's greatest man of letters... and the last true polymath to walk the earth." Works span the fields of literature, theology, and humanism.
People laud this magnum opus as one of the peaks of world literature. Other well-known literary works include his numerous poems, the
Bildungsroman Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship
and the epistolary novel
The Sorrows of Young Werther
.
With this key figure of German literature, the movement of Weimar classicism in the late 18th and early 19th centuries coincided with Enlightenment, sentimentality (Empfindsamkeit), Sturm und Drang, and Romanticism. The author of the scientific text
Theory of Colours
, he influenced Darwin with his focus on plant morphology. He also long served as the privy councilor ("Geheimrat") of the duchy of Weimar.
Goethe took great interest in the literatures of England, France, Italy, classical Greece, Persia, and Arabia and originated the concept of Weltliteratur ("world literature"). Despite his major, virtually immeasurable influence on German philosophy especially on the generation of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel and Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von Schelling, he expressly and decidedly refrained from practicing philosophy in the rarefied sense.
Influence spread across Europe, and for the next century, his works inspired much music, drama, poetry and philosophy. Many persons consider Goethe the most important writer in the German language and one of the most important thinkers in western culture as well. Early in his career, however, he wondered about painting, perhaps his true vocation; late in his life, he expressed the expectation that people ultimately would remember his work in optics.
“Crkva odlican trbuh ima,citave zemlje vec je progutala,a ipak jos se nije prezderala;jedino crkva, gospo i gospodjice draga,moze da svari nezakonita blaga.”
“Ko stalno mozga, znas, taj lici menina bravce sto se, gonjeno zlim duhom,vrti u krug po pustopolju suhom,a okolo se socna ispasa svud zeleni”
“Deo snage sam koja vazdazeli da tvori zlo, a uvek dobro sazda.”
“A one malobrojne, sto su nestoi saznali, al' nisu znali vestoda skrivaju saznanja ta,no su ih, srca nabujala sva,prostome puku obznanjivali, -njih su, otkad za svet se zna,razapinjali i spaljivali.”
“Kljuc Solomonov uvek pomazekad polupaklen se izrod pokaze.”
“I am proud of my heart alone, it is the sole source of everything, all our strength, happiness and misery. All the knowledge I possess everyone else can acquire, but my heart is all my own”
“So the restless traveler long at last for his native soil, finds his cottage in the arms of his wife, in the affection of his children, labor necessary for their support, all the happiness which he sought in vain the wild world”
“I treat my heart like a sick child and gratify its every fancy.”
“Das Rauchen macht dumm, es macht unfähig zum Denken und Dichten. Es ist auch nur für Müßiggänger, für Menschen, die Langeweile haben.[...] Aber es liegt auch im Rauchen eine arge Unhöflichkeit, eine impertinente Ungeselligkeit. Die Raucher verpesten die Luft weit und breit und ersticken jeden honetten Menschen, der nicht zu seiner Verteidigung zu rauchen vermag. Wer ist denn imstande, in das Zimmer eines Rauchers zu treten, ohne Übelkeit zu empfinden? Wer kann darin verweilen, ohne umzukommen?”