Quotes About Goethe

The two interpretations are mutually complementary. The structural—objective—interpretation seeks to embrace the whole span of the structure represented by the person of Faust, and then combine it with the genetic interpretation which recognizes that the Faust figure stands for the totality of Goethe's psychic situation, both conscious and unconscious, and for the whole history of his development.

to the end And was there from eternity. GOETHE, Westöstlicher Diwan

Beyond a given point man is not helped by more "knowing," but only by living and doing in a partly self-forgetful way. As Goethe put it, we must plunge into experience and then reflect on the meaning of it. All reflection and no plunging drives us mad; all plunging and no reflection, and we are brutes.

I have learned a deep respect for one of Goethe's couplets: Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, magic, and power in it. Begin it now. —

I have learned a deep respect for one of Goethe's couplets: "Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, magic, and power in it. Begin it now.

Zweig fue toda su vida un apasionado coleccionista. Le gustaba poseer y contemplar primeras ediciones de obras de Goethe o Schiller, partituras escritas por Mozart o Beethoven. Las contemplaba sabiendo que ahí mismo, delante de él, en aquellos papeles, estaba el sufrimiento y el gozo, el tormento y el éxtasis del acto grande.

Una vez más se confirmó el dicho de Goethe de que el entusiasmo no se adapta a un almacenaje prolongado.

The process of experiencing is well described by Goethe when he says that our life is made up of our connections with the world about us, and that we must each spin our own web and sit at the centre to catch what we can.[21] The web itself is made up of past experiences, and each new connection with the world about us, in so far as it is fully known and understood, is an addition to that web, and so an added means of experiencing.

Literature is the fragment of fragments', wrote Goethe in Wilhelm Meister's Years of Wandering, the great sad novel of his old age:

Literature is the fragment of fragments', wrote Goethe in Wilhelm Meister's Years of Wandering, the great sad novel of his old age: 'the least part of all that ever happened and was spoken was written down, and of what was written only the least part has survived . . .'.

Werther s-a sinucis, apoi tineri din toat? Europa l-au urmat ?i s-au sinucis ?i ei, mai pu?in autorul lui, Goethe, viclean maestru al practicii, a tr?it.

I know my Germany. This is a temporary illness, something like measles, which will pass as soon as the economic situation improves. Do you really believe the compatriots of Goethe and Schiller, Kant and Beethoven will fall for this rubbish?

Goethe recommended seeing human nature in the most various forms, and Mr. Babcock thought Goethe perfectly splendid.

Goethe was a stuffed shirt, by comparison. Goethe was a respectable citizen, a pedant, a bore, a universal spirit, but stamped with the German trade-mark, with the double eagle. The serenity of Goethe, the calm, Olympian attitude, is nothing more than the drowsy stupor of a German bourgeois deity. Goethe is an end of something, Whitman is a beginning.

Over time, unique invisibles, perceivable only because of the sensitivity and openness of the sensory gating in that neural network, are able to be heard and, as well, expressed through the activity of that part of the self. This is what Goethe was talking about when he said that Every new object, clearly seen, opens up a new organ of perception in us.

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.

so who are you in the end?" "I am a part of that power which eternally desires evil and eternally does good." Goethe, Faust*

Ill-humor is nothing more than an inward feeling of our own want of merit, a dissatisfaction with ourselves which is always united with an envy that foolish vanity excites.

It is in the half fools and the half wise that the greatest danger lies.

Impotent hatred is the most horrible of all emotions; one should hate nobody whom one cannot destroy.

The elder Geoffroy and Goethe propounded, at about the same time, their law of compensation or balancement of growth; or, as Goethe expressed it, in order to spend on one side, nature is forced to economise on the other side.

Cursed Mammon be, when he with treasures To restless action spurs our fate!

Like Goethe at 80, you know the futility of love and you shrug--you shrug away the warm kiss

As man is, so is his God. And thus is God oft strangely odd.