Literary and Philosophical Quotes -- Poets and Dreamers -- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Quotes by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe 3
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, 1749-1832. German poet, novelist, playwright, and natural philosopher, the greatest figure of the German Romantic period and of German literature as a whole. A master of poetry, drama, and the novel, he spent 50 years on his two-part dramatic poem Faust (published 1808 and 1832). He also conducted scientific research in various fields, notably botany, and held several governmental positions. One of the Giants of World Literature.
It is quite beyond me how anyone can believe God speaks to us in books and stories. If the world does not directly reveal to us our relationship to it, if our hearts fail to tell us what we owe ourselves and others, we shall assuredly not learn it from books, which are at best designed but to give names to our errors.
The true, prescriptive artist strives after artistic truth; the lawless artist, following blind instinct, after an appearance of naturalness. The one leads to the highest peaks of art, the other to its lowest depths.
He who has a task to perform must know how to take sides, or he is quite unworthy of it.
The world is for thousands a freak show; the images flicker past and vanish; the impressions remain flat and unconnected in the soul. Thus they are easily led by the opinions of others, are content to let their impressions be shuffled and rearranged and evaluated differently.
The passing day is prey to error. Time commands success and achievement.
Our desires presage the capacities within us; they are harbingers of what we shall be able to accomplish. What we can do and want to do is projected in our imagination, quite outside ourselves, and into the future. We are attracted to what is already ours in secret. Thus passionate anticipation transforms what is indeed possible into dreamt-for reality.
More Quotes by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe: Page 1, 2, 3, 4, 5
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