(28 August 1749 – 22 March 1832 / Frankfurt am Main)

poet Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
#128 on top 500 poets

Quotations

  • ''Don't feel guilty if you don't immediately love your stepchildren as you do your own, or as much as you think you should. Everyone needs time to adjust to the new family, adults included. There is no such thing as an "instant parent."
    Actually, no concrete object lies outside of the poetic sphere as long as the poet knows how to use the object properly.''
    Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe (1749-1832), German poet, dramatist, and Ann Levine (20th century), U.S. author and writer. Conversations with Eckermann, ch. 3 (July 5, 1827).
    16 person liked.
    		5 person did not like.
  • ''I never knew a more presumptuous person than myself. The fact that I say that shows that what I say is true.''
    Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe (1749-1832), German poet, dramatist. Sayings in Prose (posthumous).
    15 person liked.
    		4 person did not like.
  • ''Artists have a double relationship towards nature: they are her master and her slave at the same time. They are her slave in so far as they must work with means of this world so as to be understood; her master in so far as they subject these means to their higher goals and make them subservient to them.''
    Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe (1749-1832), German poet, dramatist. Conversations with Eckermann (April 18, 1827).
    14 person liked.
    		3 person did not like.
  • ''The day is for mistake and error, sequence of time for success and carrying out. The one who anticipates is master of the day.''
    Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe (1749-1832), German poet, dramatist. Sayings in Prose (posthumous).
    22 person liked.
    		2 person did not like.
  • ''Even though the world as a whole progresses, youth must always start again from the beginning, and as individuals go through the epochs of the world's culture.''
    Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe (1749-1832), German poet, dramatist. Conversations with Eckermann (January 17, 1827).
    2 person liked.
    		1 person did not like.
  • ''I curse all negative purism that tells me not to use a word from another language that either expresses something that my own language cannot or does that in a more delicate manner.''
    Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe (1749-1832), German poet, dramatist. Sayings in Prose (posthumous).
    2 person liked.
    		1 person did not like.
  • ''It is always a sign of an unproductive time when it concerns itself with petty and technical aspects [in philology], and likewise it is a sign of an unproductive person to pursue such trifles.''
    Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe (1749-1832), German poet, dramatist. Conversations with Eckermann (February 11, 1831).
    3 person liked.
    		1 person did not like.
  • ''The eye doesn't see any shapes, it sees only what is differentiated through light and dark or through colors.''
    Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe (1749-1832), German poet, dramatist. Sayings in Prose (posthumous).
    3 person liked.
    		0 person did not like.
  • ''You will find the most pronounced hatred of other nations on the lowest cultural levels. There is, though, a level where the hatred disappears completely and where one so to speak stands above the nations and where one experiences fortune or misfortune of a neighboring country as if they had happened to one's own.''
    Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe (1749-1832), German poet, dramatist. Conversations with Eckermann (March 14, 180?).
    1 person liked.
    		1 person did not like.
  • ''If youth is a fault, it is one that one gets rid of soon enough.''
    Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe (1749-1832), German poet, dramatist. Sayings in Prose (posthumous).
    4 person liked.
    		0 person did not like.

Read more quotations »

To Belinda

WHEREFORE drag me to yon glittering eddy,

With resistless might?
Was I, then, not truly blest already

In the silent night?

In my secret chamber refuge taking,

Read more »
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