Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
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.
“It is not given to us to grasp the truth, which is identical with the divine, directly. We perceive it only in reflection, in example and symbol, in singular and related appearances. It meets us as a kind of life which is incomprehensible to us, and yet we cannot free ourselves from the desire to comprehend it.”
“The highest goal that man can achieve is amazement.”
“As soon as you trust yourself, you will know how to live.”
“Nothing is so strong as gentleness, nothing so gentle as real strength.”
“Age does not make us childish, as some say; it finds us true children.”
“By seeking and blundering we learn.”
“If you would create something,you must be something.”
“There is nothing more frightful than ignorance in action.”
“We do not have to visit a madhouse to find disordered minds; our planet is the mental institution of the universe.”
“Gözlerin açık diye gördüğünü sanıyorsun.”
“Let mental culture go on advancing, let the natural sciences progress in even greater extent and depth, and the human mind widen itself as much as it desires: beyond the elevation and moral culture of Christianity, as it shines forth in the Gospels, it will not go.”
“Knowing is not enough; we must apply. Willing is not enough; we must do.”
“To be loved for what one is, that is the greatest exception. The great majority love in others only what they lend him; their own selves, their version of him.”
“Life belongs to the living, and he who lives must be prepared for changes.”
“Faust: Who holds the devil, let him hold him well, He hardly will be caught a second time.”
“Mephistopholese: But we, more cunning in our cares, Must take our joys before they fade.”
“In the colorful reflection we have what is life.”
“Waste not a day in vain digression;with resolute, courageous trustseek every possible impressionand make it firmly your posessionyou'll then work on because you must.”
“Love is an ideal thing, marriage a real thing; a confusion of the real with the ideal never goes unpunished.”
“The greatest thing in this world is not so much where we stand as in what direction we are moving.”
“Instruction does much, but encouragement everything."(Letter to A.F. Oeser, Nov. 9, 1768)”
“There is nothing worse than aggressive stupidity.”
“Who is the happiest of men? He who values the merits of others, and in their pleasure takes joy, even as though 'twere his own. ”
“Beauty is a manifestation of secret natural laws, which otherwise would have been hidden from us forever.”
“A person hears only what they understand.”
“Enjoy when you can, and endure when you must.”
“Things which matter most must never be at the mercy of things which matter least.”
“What I possess, seems far away to me, and what is gone becomes reality.”
“Divide and rule, a sound motto. Unite and lead, a better one.”
“[W]hat counts is that one perceives excellence and dares to give it expression, which sounds little but is in fact a great deal.”