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Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
- Age does not make us childish, as men tell,
It merely finds us children still at heart.Faust pt. 1 (1808) ‘Prologue in the Theatre’ - Man will err while yet he strives.Faust pt. 1 (1808) ‘Prolog im Himmel’
- Deny yourself! You must deny yourself!
That is the song that never ends.Faust pt. 1 (1808) ‘Studierzimmer’ - All theory, dear friend, is grey, but the golden tree of actual life springs ever green.Faust pt. 1 (1808) ‘Studierzimmer’
- Just trust yourself and you'll learn the art of living.Faust pt. 1 (1808) ‘Studierzimmer’
- Meine Ruh' ist hin,
Mein Herz ist schwer.My peace is gone,
My heart is heavy.Faust pt. 1 (1808) ‘Gretchen am Spinnrad’ - Die Tat ist alles, nichts der Ruhm.The deed is all, the glory nothing.Faust pt. 2 (1832) ‘Hochgebirg’
- Das Ewig-Weibliche zieht uns hinan.Eternal Woman draws us upward.Faust pt. 2 (1832) ‘Hochgebirg’ closing words
- It's exactly where a thought is lacking
That, just in time, a word shows up instead.Faust (1808) - In art the best is good enough.Italienische Reise (1816–17) 3 March 1787
- Superstition is the poetry of life.Maximen und Reflexionen (1819) ‘Literatur und Sprache’ no. 908
- He who does not know foreign languages knows nothing of his own.Maximen und Reflexionen (1821) pt. 2, no. 91
- Doubt grows with knowledge.Maxims and Reflections (1826) ‘Art and Antiquity’ no. 281
- Nothing is more terrible than to see ignorance in action.Maxims and Reflections (1826) ‘Art and Antiquity’ no. 367
- Mathematicians are like a certain type of Frenchman: when you talk to them they translate it into their own language, and then it soon turns into something completely different.Maxims and Reflections (1998) tr. E. Stopp
- What one wishes for in youth, one has in abundance in old age.Poetry and Truth (1812) pt. 2, motto
- Talent develops in quiet places, character in the full current of human life.Torquato Tasso (1790) act 1, sc. 2
- Die Wahlverwandtschaften.Elective affinities.title of novel (1809)
- He who thinks to realize when he is older the hopes and desires of youth is always deceiving himself, for every decade of a man's life possesses its own kind of happiness, its own hopes and prospects.Elective Affinities (1809) pt. 2, ch. 12
- Oh, how I am tired of the struggle!Wandrers Nachtlied (1821)
- Über allen Gipfeln
Ist Ruh'.Over all the mountain tops is peace.Wandrers Nachtlied II (1815) - Die Vögelein schweigen im Walde
Warte nur, balde
Ruhest du auch.The birds in the forest are silent
Just wait, soon
You will rest as well.‘Wandrers Nachtlied II’ (1815) - Kennst du das Land, wo die Zitronen blühn?
Im dunkeln Laub die Gold-Orangen glühn.Know you the land where the lemon-trees bloom? In the dark foliage the gold oranges glow.Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre (1795–6) bk. 3, ch. 1 - If I love you, what does that matter to you!Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre (1795–6) bk. 4, ch. 9
- None but the lonely heart
Knows what I suffer!Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre (1795–6) bk. 4, ch. 11 ‘Mignons Lied’ - When we take people, thou wouldst say, merely as they are, we make them worse; when we treat them as if they were what they should be, we improve them as far as they can be improved.sometimes quoted as ‘Treat a man as he is, and that is what he remains. Treat a man as he can be, and that is what he becomes’Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjare (1795–6) bk. 8, ch. 4, tr. Thomas Carlyle
- Ohne Hast, aber ohne Rast.Without haste, but without rest.Zahme Xenien (with Schiller, 1796) sect. 2, no. 6, l. 281
- If you wish to advance into the infinite, explore the finite in all directions.epigram, in David Luke Goethe: Selected Verse (1964)
- I do not know myself, and God forbid that I should.J. P. Eckermann Conversations with Goethe in the Last Years of his Life (1836–48) 10 April 1829; see Anonymous
- Mehr Licht!More light!abbreviated version of his last words: ‘Open the second shutter, so that more light can come in’K. W. Müller Goethes letze literarische Thätigkeit (1832)
