Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Born at 12:30pm-LMT

Considered Germanys greatest poet and playwright.

Terribly afraid of dogs, hence in "Faust-Part 1", Mephistopholes is initially personified as a black poodle bringing evil.

Had worked on the "Faust" books for over 50 years and finished the second part shortly before his death.

One son by Christiane: August Goethe, born December 25th 1789 and died October 27th 1830.

Estimated to have had an IQ of 210.

He was best friends with Friedrich Schiller. They are portrayed together in a statue in front of the Theater in Weimar, Germany.

Had a daughter, Ottilie

Great-great-grandfather of Bertie Higgins.

Girls we love for what they are; young men for what they promise to be.

If youth is a fault, it is one that one gets rid of soon enough.

[on children] If children grew up according to early indications, we,should have nothing but geniuses.

[on choice] Decision and perseverance are the noblest qualities of man.

[on encouragement/discouragement] Encouragement after censure is as the,sun after a shower.

Smoking stupefies a man, and makes him incapable of thinking or writing.

I have so much in me, and the feeling for her absorbs it all; I have so much, and without her it all comes to nothing.

You can’t, if you can’t feel it, if it neverRises from the soul, and swaysThe heart of every single hearer,With deepest power, in simple ways. You’ll sit forever, gluing things together,Cooking up a stew from other’s scraps,Blowing on a miserable fire,Made from your heap of dying ash. Let apes and children praise your art,If their admiration’s to your taste,But you’ll never speak from heart to heart,Unless it rises up from your heart’s space.

This is the true measure of love: when we believe that we alone can love, that no one could ever have loved so before us, and that no one will ever love in the same way after us.

As soon as you trust yourself, you will know how to live.

There is nothing more frightful than ignorance in action.

Life belongs to the living, and he who lives must be prepared for changes.

If you would create something,you must be something.

He who moves not forward, goes backward.

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.

Man is not born to solve the problem of the universe, but to find out what he has to do; and to restrain himself within the limits of his comprehension.

What matters creative endless toil, When, at a snatch, oblivion ends the coil?,Ohne Hast, aber ohne Rast. - Without haste, but without rest.

The way you see people is the way you treat them and the way you treat them is what they become.

Truth has to be repeated constantly, because Error also is being preached all the time, and not just by a few, but by the multitude. In the Press and Encyclopaedias, in Schools and Universities, everywhere Error holds sway, feeling happy and comfortable in the knowledge of having Majority on its side.

Wild dreams torment me as I lie. And though a god lives in my heart, though all my power waken at his word, though he can move my every inmost part - yet nothing in the outer world is stirred. thus by existence tortured and oppressed I crave for death, I long for rest.

All truly wise thoughts have been thought already thousands of times; but to make them truly ours, we must think them over again honestly, until they take root in our personal experience.

Behaviour is a mirror in which every one displays his own image.

Age does not make us childish, as some say; it finds us true children.

. . . nothing is more dangerous than solitude: there our imagination, always disposed to rise, taking a new flight on the wings of fancy, pictures to us a chain of beings of whom we seem the most inferior. All things appear greater than they really are, and all seem superior to us. This operation of the mind is quite natural: we so continually feel our own imperfections, and fancy we perceive in others the qualities we do not possess, attributing to them also all that we enjoy ourselves, that by this process we form the idea of a perfect, happy man,—a man, however, who only exists in our own imagination.

A human being needs only a small plot of ground on which to be happy, and even less to lie beneath.

One ought, every day at least, to hear a little song, read a good poem, see a fine picture, and, if it were possible, to speak a few reasonable words.

The person born with a talent they are meant to use will find their greatest happiness in using it.

If you treat an individual as he is, he will remain how he is. But if you treat him as if he were what he ought to be and could be, he will become what he ought to be and could be.

He who cannot draw on three thousand years is living from hand to mouth.

Those who know nothing of foreign languages know nothing of their own.

I am not omniscient, but I know a lot.

Anything in the world can be endured, except a series of wonderful days.

Instruction does much, but encouragement everyt,Everything is hard before it is easy,If the whole world I once could seeOn free soil stand, with the people freeThen to the moment might I say,Linger awhile. . . so fair thou art.

Nothing is more highly to be prized than the value of each day,Insofar as he makes use of his healthy senses, man himself is the best and most exact scientific instrument possible. The greatest misfortune of modern physics is that its experiments have been set apart from man, as it were, physics refuses to recognize nature in anything not shown by artificial instruments, and even uses this as a measure of its accomplishments.

Let this little book be thy friend, if, owing to fortune or through thine own fault, thou canst not find a dearer companion.

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.

The greatest thing in this world is not so much where we stand as in what direction we are moving.

Be above it! Make the world serve your purpose, but do not serve it!,The heights charm us, but the steps do not; with the mountain in our view we love to walk the plains.

None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free,Nothing can be compared to the new life that the discovery of another country provides for a thoughtful person. Although I am still the same I believe to have changed to the bones.

A man should hear a little music, read a little poetry, and see a fine picture every day of his life, in order that worldly cares may not obliterate the sense of the beautiful which God has implanted in the human soul.

The soul that sees beauty may sometimes walk alone.

You must, in studying Nature, always consider both each single thing and the whole: nothing is inside and nothing is outside, for what is within is without. Make haste, then, to grasp this holy mystery which is public knowledge. Rejoice in the true illusion, in the serious game: no living thing is a unity, it is always manifold.

Love is an ideal thing, marriage a real thing.

For in music there is no material to be deducted.

Music is either sacred or profane. What is sacred accords completely with its nobility, and this is where music most immediately influences life; such influence remains unchanged at all times and in every epoch. Profane music should be altogether cheerful. Music of a kind that mixes the sacred with the profane is godless and shoddy music wich goes in for expressing feeble, wretched, deplorable feelings, and is just insipid. For it is not serious enough to be sacred and it lacks the chief quality of the opposite kind: cheerfulness.

All the knowledge I possess everyone else can acquire, but my heart is all my own.

To end the greatest work designed,A thousand hands need but one mind.

What you feed in yourself that grows.

You are aware of only one unrest;Oh, never learn to know the other!Two souls, alas, are dwelling in my breast,And one is striving to forsake its brother. Unto the world in grossly loving zest,With clinging tendrils, one adheres;The other rises forcibly in questOf rarefied ancestral spheres. If there be spirits in the airThat hold their sway between the earth and sky,Descend out of the golden vapors thereAnd sweep me into iridescent life. Oh, came a magic cloak into my handsTo carry me to distant lands,I should not trade it for the choicest gown,Nor for the cloak and garments of the crown.

The world admires wealth and velocity—these are the things for which everyone strives. Railroads, the post, steamboats, and all possible modes of communication are the means by which the world overeducates itself and freezes itself in mediocrity.

Let everyone sweep in front of his own door, and the whole world will be clean.

I possess so much, but my love for her absorbs it all. I possess so much, but without her I have nothing.

And while throughout the self same motion Repeated on forever flows The thousandfold o er arching ocean Its strong embrace around all throws Streams through all things the joy of living The least star thrilleth fond accord And all their crowding all their striving Is endless rest in God the Lord. - - -GER:Wenn im Unendlichen dasselbeSich wiederholend ewig fließt,Das tausendfältige GewölbeSich kräftig ineinander schließt,Strömt Lebenslust aus allen Dingen,Dem kleinsten wie dem größten SternUnd alles Drängen, alles RingenIst ewige Ruh in Gott dem Herrn. Zahme Xenien VI.

No one is willing to believe that adults too, like children, wander about this earth in a daze and, like children, do not know where they come from or where they are going, act as rarely as they do according to genuine motives, and are as thoroughly governed as they are by biscuits and cake and the rod.

We often feel that we lack something, and seem to see that very quality in someone else, promptly attributing all our own qualities to him too, and a kind of ideal contentment as well. And so the happy mortal is a model of complete perfection--which we have ourselves created.

The affairs of the world are no more than so much trickery, and a man who toils for money or honour or whatever else in deference to the wishes of others, rather than because his own desire or needs lead him to do so, will always be a fool.

When a nation which has long groaned under the intolerable yoke of a tyrant rises at last and throws off its chains, do you call that weakness? The man who, to rescue his house from the flames, finds his physical strength redoubled, so that he lifts burdens with ease which in the absence of excitement he could scarcely move; he who under the rage of an insult attacks and puts to flight half a score of his enemies,—are such persons to be called weak? My good friend, if resistance be strength, how can the highest degree of resistance be a weakness?,What is the destiny of man, but to fill up the measure of his sufferings, and to drink his allotted cup of bitterness?,Literature decays only as men become more and more corrupt.

Then indecision brings its own delays, And days are lost lamenting over lost days. Are you in earnest? Seize this very minute; What you can do, or dream you can do, begin it; Boldness has genius, power and magic in it.

If any man wish to write in a clear style, let him be first clear in his thoughts; and if any would write in a noble style, let him first possess a noble soul.

nothing puts me so completely out of patience as the utterance of a wretched commonplace when I am talking from my inmost heart.

I was on the point of breaking off the conversation, for nothing puts me so completely out of patience as the utterance of a wretched commonplace when I am talking from my inmost heart.

The limits of my language are the limits of my universe.

It seems it has been my fate to sadden those I should have made happy.

God knows I often retire to my bed wishing (at times even hoping) that I might never wake up; and in the morning I open my eyes, see the sun once again, and am miserable.

I could be living the best and happiest of lives if only I were not a fool.

We look back on our life as a thing of broken pieces, because our mistakes and failures are always the first to strike us, and outweigh in our imagination what we have accomplished and attained.

We really learn only from those books that we cannot judge. The author of a book that we were able to judge would have to learn from us.

Magic is believing in yourself, if you can do that, you can make anything happen.

When I go out by the gateway, taking the road I drove along that first time I picked up Lotte for the ball, how very different it all is! It is all over, all of it! There is not a hint of the world that once was, not one bulse-beat of those past emotions. I feel like a ghost returning to the burnt-out ruins of the castle he built in his prime as a prince, which he adorned with magnificent splendours and then, on his deathbed, but full of hope, left to his beloved son,And when I look around the apartment where I now am,—when I see Charlotte’s apparel lying before me, and Albert’s writings, and all those articles of furniture which are so familiar to me, even to the very inkstand which I am using,—when I think what I am to this family—everything. My friends esteem me; I often contribute to their happiness, and my heart seems as if it could not beat without them; and yet—if I were to die, if I were to be summoned from the midst of this circle, would they feel—or how long would they feel—the void which my loss would make in their existence? How long! Yes, such is the frailty of man, that even there, where he has the greatest consciousness of his own being, where he makes the strongest and most forcible impression, even in the memory, in the heart of his beloved, there also he must perish,—vanish,—and that quickly. I could tear open my bosom with vexation to think how little we are capable of influencing the feelings of each other. No one can communicate to me those sensations of love, joy, rapture, and delight which I do not naturally possess; and though my heart may glow with the most lively affection, I cannot make the happiness of one in whom the same warmth is not inherent. Sometimes I don’t understand how another can love her, is allowed to love her, since I love her so completely myself, so intensely, so fully, grasp nothing, know nothing, have nothing but her!I possess so much, but my love for her absorbs it all. I possess so much, but without her I have nothing. One hundred times have I been on the point of embracing her. Heavens! what a torment it is to see so much loveliness passing and repassing before us, and yet not dare to lay hold of it! And laying hold is the most natural of human instincts. Do not children touch everything they see? And I!Witness, Heaven, how often I lie down in my bed with a wish, and even a hope, that I may never awaken again! And in the morning, when I open my eyes, I behold the sun once more, and am wretched. If I were whimsical, I might blame the weather, or an acquaintance, or some personal disappointment, for my discontented mind; and then this insupportable load of trouble would not rest entirely upon myself. But, alas! I feel it too sadly; I am alone the cause of my own woe, am I not? Truly, my own bosom contains the source of all my pleasure. Am I not the same being who once enjoyed an excess of happiness, who at every step saw paradise open before him, and whose heart was ever expanded towards the whole world? And this heart is now dead; no sentiment can revive it. My eyes are dry; and my senses, no more refreshed by the influence of soft tears, wither and consume my brain. I suffer much, for I have lost the only charm of life: that active, sacred power which created worlds around me,—it is no more. When I look from my window at the distant hills, and behold the morning sun breaking through the mists, and illuminating the country around, which is still wrapped in silence, whilst the soft stream winds gently through the willows, which have shed their leaves; when glorious Nature displays all her beauties before me, and her wondrous prospects are ineffectual to extract one tear of joy from my withered heart,—I feel that in such a moment I stand like a reprobate before heaven, hardened, insensible, and unmoved. Oftentimes do I then bend my knee to the earth, and implore God for the blessing of tears, as the desponding labourer in some scorching climate prays for the dews of heaven to moisten his parched corn.

Must it so be that whatever makes man happy must later become the source of his misery?,Only air and light and the love of friends! Let no man lose heart who still has these.

Whilst I could not think of any man whose spirit was, or needed to be, more enlarged than the spirit of a genuine merchant. What a thing it is to see the order which prevails throughout his business! By means of this he can at any time survey the general whole, without needing to perplex himself in the details. What advantages does he derive from the system of book-keeping by double entry? It is among the finest inventions of the human mind; every prudent master of a house should introduce it into his economy.

When a human awakens to a great dream and throws the full force of his soul over it, all the universe conspires in your favor.

But there are times," said Charlotte, "when it is necessary and an act of friendship to write nothing rather than not to write.

Everything is just how I imagined it, yet everything is new,We are all pilgrims who seek Italy.

Once we are lost unto ourselves, everything else is lost to us.

Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it.

Who are you then?" "I am part of that power which eternally wills evil and eternally works good.

It is not easy in this world for one person to understand the next one.

Moreover I hate everything which merely instructs me without increasing or directly quickening my activity.

Art is long, life short, judgment difficult, opportunity transient. To act is easy, to think is hard; to act according to our thought is troublesome.

Because everyone uses language to talk, everyone thinks they can talk about language.

Du hast so viele Leben, wie du Sprachen sprichst. (You have as many lives as the number of languages you speak. ),Do not give in too much to feelings. A overly sensitive heart is an unhappy possession on this shaky earth.

A mans manners are a mirror in which he shows his portrait.

Each one sees what he carries in his heart.

if only these treasures were not so fragile as they are precious and beautiful.

It is ever true that he who does nothing for others, does nothing for himself.

Naturalists tell of a noble race of horses that instinctively open a vein with their teeth, when heated and exhausted by a long course, in order to breathe more freely. I am often tempted to open a vein, to procure for myself everlasting liberty. Cento volte ho impugnato una lama per conficcarmela nel cuore. Si dice di una nobile razza i cavalli,che quando si sentono accaldati e affaticati, si aprono istintivamente una vena, per respirare più liberamente. Spesso anche io vorrei aprirmi una vena che mi desse libertà eterna.

Talent develops in tranquility, character in the full current of human life.

There is nothing in which people more betray their character than in what they find to laugh at.

There is nothing in which people more betray their character than in what they laugh at.

schade dass die Natur nur einen Mensch aus dir schuf / denn zum wurdigen Mann war und zum Schelmen der Stoff" (loose translation: nature, alas, made only one being out of you although there was material for a good man & a rogue),Every day one should at least hear one little song, read one good poem, see one fine painting and -- if at all possible -- speak a few sensible words.

Cease endlessly striving for what you would like to do and learn to love what must be done.

Choose well. Your choice is brief, and yet endless.

In this world one is seldom reduced to make a selection between two alternatives. There are as many varieties of conduct and opinion as there are turns of feature between an aquiline nose and a flat one.

In the realm of ideas, everything depends on enthusiasm. . . . In the real world, all rests on perseverance.

Classicism is health, romanticisim is sickness.

Grant me one hour on love’s most sacred shoresTo clasp the bosom that my soul adores,Lie heart to heart and merge my soul with yours.

I will say nothing against the course of my existence. But at bottom it has been nothing but pain and burden, and I can affirm that during the whole of my 75 years, I have not had four weeks of genuine well-being. It is but the perpetual rolling of a rock that must be raised up again forever.

I will say nothing. . . against the course of my existence. But at bottom it has been nothing but pain and burden, and I can affirm that during the whole of my 75 years, I have not had four weeks of genuine well-being. It is but the perpetual rolling of a rock that must be raised up again forever.

Legislators and revolutionaries who promise equality and liberty at the same time, are either psychopaths or mountebanks.

Man needs only a small patch of earth for his pleasures, and a smaller one still to rest beneath.

Solitude is precious balm to my heart in these paradistic parts.

The things I know, every man can know, but, oh, my heart is mine alone!,The Church has an excellent appetite. She has swallowed whole countries and the questionHas never risen of indigestion. Only the Church can take Ill-gotten goods without stomach-ache!,There is strong shadow where there is much light.

Everything transitory is but an image.

Gracious Providence, to whom I owe all my powers, why didst thou not withhold some of those blessings I possess, and substitute in their place a feeling of self-confidence and contentment?,As usual, I shall tell my story badly; and you, as usual, will think me extravagant.

A clever man commits no minor blunders.

There occurs the beautiful feeling that only humanity together is the true human being, and that the individual can be cheerful and happy only if he has the courage to feel himself in the Whole.

Daring ideas are like chessmen moved forward. They may be beaten, but they may start a winning game.

15"General ideas and great conceit are always a fair way to bring about terrible misfortune.

Whatever liberates our spirit without giving us mastery over ourselves is destructive.

In all things it is better to hope than to despair.

Divide and rule, the politician cries;Unite and lead, is watchword of the wise.

On my strand, lovely flowers their blossoms unfold,My mother shall grace thee with garments of gold.

National hatred is something peculiar. You will always find it strongest and most violent where there is the lowest degree of culture.

On top of the world, or in the depths of despair.

All that is transitory is but a metaphor.

Being full of mischief, they love to listen;they gladly obey, for they like to betray you,pretending to be sent from Heaven,and lisping like angels, while they lie.

Glib tongues frill up their hash of knowledgefor mankind in polished speechesthat are no more than vaporous windsrustling the fallen leaves in autumn.

Men grieve [Mephistopheles] so with the days of their lamenting, [he] even hate[s] to plague them with [his] torments.

Here too it’s masquerade, I find: As everywhere, the dance of mind. I grasped a lovely masked procession,And caught things from a horror show…I’d gladly settle for a false impression,If it would last a little longer, though.

We are so constituted that we believe the most incredible things; and, once they are engraved upon the memory, woe to him who would endeavour to efface them.

The best slave is the one who thinks he is free.

One who has passed the thirtieth yearalready is as good as dead--it would be best to kill you off by then.

One always has time enough, if one will apply it well.

Those who have never seen themselves surrounded on all sides by the sea can never possess an idea of the world, and of their relation to it.

Love does not dominate it cultivates.

If any man wish to write in a clear style, let him be first clear in his thoughts.

There are only two lasting bequests we can hope to give our children. One of these is roots, the other, wings.

Those who hope for no other life are dead even for this.

Being brilliant is no great feat if you respect nothing.

Every day we should hear at least one little song, read one good poem, see one exquisite picture, and, if possible, speak a few sensible words.

Nothing is worth more than this day.

I love those who yearn for the impossible.

Dream no small dreams for they have no power to move the hearts of men.

Love does not dominate it cultivates.

To witness two lovers is a spectacle for the gods.

Thinking is more interesting than knowing, but less interesting than looking.

Wood burns because it has the proper stuff in it and a man becomes famous because he has the proper stuff in him.

In nature we never see anything isolated, but everything in connection with something else which is before it, beside it, under it and over it.

One must ask children and birds how cherries and strawberries taste.

Nature knows no pause in progress and development, and attaches her curse on all inaction.

He who possesses art and science has religion; he who does not possess them, needs religion.

Where is the man who has the strength to be true, and to show himself as he is?,A useless life is an early death.

An unused life is an early death.

I call architecture frozen music.

Error is acceptable as long as we are young but one must not drag it along into old age.

Age merely shows what children we remain.

A really great talent finds its happiness in execution.

The person born with a talent they are meant to use will find their greatest happiness in using it.

All intelligent thoughts have already been thought what is necessary is only to try to think them again.

One cannot develop taste from what is of average quality but only from the very best.

Great thoughts and a pure heart, that is what we should ask from God.

If God had wanted me otherwise, He would have created me otherwise.

We know accurately only when we know little, with knowledge doubt increases.

Doubt grows with knowledge.

It is the strange fate of man, that even in the greatest of evils the fear of the worst continues to haunt him.

Wisdom is found only in truth.

Only by joy and sorrow does a person know anything about themselves and their destiny. They learn what to do and what to avoid.

Correction does much, but encouragement does more.

Beauty is everywhere a welcome guest.

Beauty is a manifestation of secret natural laws, which otherwise would have been hidden from us forever.

He who does not think much of himself is much more esteemed than he imagines.

Nothing is more fearful than imagination without taste.

Few people have the imagination for reality.

Personality is everything in art and poetry.

It is after all the greatest art to limit and isolate oneself.

In art the best is good enough.

The mediator of the inexpressible is the work of art.

The biggest problem with every art is by the use of appearance to create a loftier reality.

Knowing is not enough we must apply. Willing is not enough we must do.

To rule is easy, to govern difficult.

Which government is the best? The one that teaches us to govern ourselves.

The best government is that which teaches us to govern ourselves.

Many people take no care of their money till they come nearly to the end of it, and others do just the same with their time.

The way you see people is the way you treat them, and the way you treat them is what they become.

Ignorant men raise questions that wise men answered a thousand years ago.

This is the highest wisdom that I own freedom and life are earned by those alone who conquer them each day anew.

Everything in the world may be endured except continual prosperity.

He is happiest, be he king or peasant, who finds peace in his home.

On all the peaks lies peace.

Piety is not a goal but a means to attain through the purest peace of mind the highest culture.

All theory, dear friend, is gray, but the golden tree of life springs ever green.

Character develops itself in the stream of life.

What is important in life is life, and not the result of life.

Girls we love for what they are young men for what they promise to be.

Superstition is the poetry of life.

Science arose from poetry. . . when times change the two can meet again on a higher level as friends.

All things are only transitory.

The artist alone sees spirits. But after he has told of their appearing to him, everybody sees them.

What is uttered from the heart alone, Will win the hearts of others to your own.

No one would talk much in society if they knew how often they misunderstood others.

One can be instructed in society, one is inspired only in solitude.

He only earns his freedom and his life Who takes them every day by storm.

None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free. .