Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Germany's greatest writer, Faust
Most quoted
"The human mind is not capable of grasping the Universe. We are like a little child entering a huge library. The walls are covered with books. The books are written in many different tongues. The child knows that someone must have written these books. It does not know who or how. It does not understand the languages in which they are written. But the child notes a definite plan in the arrangement of the books, a mysterious order, which it dimly comprehends but does not understand."
— from Conversations with Eckermann
"The greatest evil is not now done in those sordid 'dens of crime' that Dickens loved to paint... but in clean, carpeted, warmed and well-lighted offices, by quiet men with white collars and cut fingernails and smooth-shaven cheeks who do not need to raise their voices."
— from Attributed (often misattributed to C.S. Lewis, but reflects a similar sentiment found in Goethe's critiques of bureaucracy and detached evil)
"The human race is a monotonous affair. Most people spend the greatest part of their time working in order to live, and what little freedom remains so fills them with fear that they seek out any and every means to be rid of it."
— from Elective Affinities, 1809
All quotes by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (267)
The world is so empty if one thinks only of mountains, rivers and cities; but to know someone who thinks and feels with us, and who, though distant, is close to us in spirit, this makes the earth for us an inhabited garden.
I am part of that power which eternally wills evil and eternally works good.
Plunge boldly into the thick of life! every day brings its new chance.
The person born with a talent they are meant to use will find their greatest happiness in using it.
Let everyone sweep in front of his own door, and the whole world will be clean.
A person hears only what they understand.
The highest wisdom has no form; the highest form has no content.
One lives but once in the world.
The beginning and end of all literary activity is the reproduction of the world that surrounds one.
A classic is what is always contemporary.
More light!
I do not know myself, and God forbid that I should.
The French complain of everything bad over here.
In politics, as in life, we must act according to the situation.
The statesman must be a man of the world, and the man of the world must be a statesman.
Nature is the living, visible garment of God.
Talent develops in quiet places, character in the full current of human life.
A really great talent finds its happiness in execution.
The moment one definitely commits oneself, then Providence moves too.
Enjoy when you can, and endure when you must.
Contemporaries of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Other Literatures born within 50 years of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832).