Quotes About Goethe

A part of that Power that, always wishing for Evil, only knows how to do Good. -Mephistopheles

I say to you that scholarly fellows [1830] Are like the cattle on an arid heath: Some evil spirit leads them round in circles, While sweet green meadows lie beneath.

Say what we may of the inadequacy of translation, yet the work is and will always be one of the weightiest and worthiest undertakings in the general concerns of the world.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Never shall I dare implant a kiss on these lips where the spirits of heaven dwell.

It is the greatest and most genuine of pleasures to observe a great mind in sympathy with our own.

Kein Argument bringt mich so aus der Fessung, als wenn einer mit einem unbedeutenden Gemeinspruche angezogen kommt, wenn ich aus ganzem Herzen rede.

It is a false compliance with the multitude to raise in them emotions which they wish, when these are not emotions which they ought, to feel." "Whoever

This sally somewhat nettled Wilhelm; but he concealed his sentiments, remembering that Werner used to listen with composure to his apostrophes.

I didn't ask for this role, but I'll play it. Now go do your best. Be bold, and mighty forces will come to your aid. Goethe said that. It's not too late for you to become a person of substance, Russell. Please get my son home safely. You know, I'm glad we spoke.

Four very strange and truly poetic human beings in this century have attained mastery in prose, for which this century was not made otherwise—for lack of poetry, as I have suggested. Not including Goethe, who may fairly be claimed by the century that produced him, I regard only Giacomo Leopardi, Prosper Mérimée, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Walter Savage Landor, the author of Imaginary Conversations, as worthy of being called masters of prose.35 93

In the struggle with the English mechanistic dumbing down of the world, Hegel and Schopenhauer (along with Goethe) were unanimous—both of these hostile fraternal geniuses in philosophy, who moved away from each other towards opposite poles of the German spirit and, in the process, wronged each other, as only brothers do.

Goethe died in 1832. As you know, Goethe was very active in science. In fact, he did some very good scientific work in plant morphology and mineralogy. But he was quite bitter at the way in which many scientists refused to grant him a hearing because he was a poet and therefore, they felt, he couldn't be serious.

The hand gestures of Italians are not, apparently, as clear-cut as Goethe believed. De Jorio discovered that knowing the purpose of someone's mind

Sensitivity to dopamine also declines because dopamine receptors, anticipating high levels, have down-regulated. This may explain Goethe's famous remark, 'Nothing is harder to bear than a succession of fair days.

Yes, there are in me the makings of a very fine loafer, and also of a pretty spry sort of fellow. I often think of those lines of old Goethe : 'Schade, daß die Natur nur einen Menschen aus dir schuf; Denn zum würdigen Mann war und zum Schelmen der Stoff.'

The fine emotions whence our lives we mold Lie in the earthly tumult dumb and cold.

Fear and horror of the franc-tireur sprang from the German feeling that civil resistance was essentially disorderly. If there has to be a choice between injustice and disorder, said Goethe, the German prefers injustice.

Time may restore us in his course Goethe's sage mind and Byron's force: But where will Europe's latter hour Again find Wordsworth's healing power?

Und bald sollte die tiefe Unwahrheit jenes Wortes an den Tag kommen, das Napoleon in Erfuhrt zu Goethe gesprochen: Die Politik ist das Schicksal. Nein, der Geist ist das Schicksal und Schicksal ist Geist. Das Wesen des Geistes aber ist die Freiheit.

Goethe is always pithy.

a man must take his children on trust—isn't that what Goethe says?* CAPTAIN

Goethe put it over two centuries ago . . . Life as a whole expresses itself as a force that is not to be contained within any one part. . . . The things we call the parts in every living being are so inseparable from the whole that they may be understood only in and with the whole.

Of the book of books most wondrous is the tender book of love.