Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832) was the greatest icon in the German literary and cultural pantheon. This master of world literature was a polymath: not only was he a poet, novelist, playwright, historian, and natural philosopher, but he also held several government positions at Weimar and made scientific discoveries.
Goethe gained early fame with his first novel Die Leiden des jungen Werthers (1774; The Sorrows of Young Werther.) Written as a collection of letters by the protagonist, this sentimental epistolary novel tells the story of a young man who falls in love with a woman engaged to another man.
Goethe also wrote hundreds of essays, many volumes of lyric poetry, and an in-depth dissertation on the physics of light and color contrasting his theories against Newton’s.
Goethe is most famous for his magnum opus Faust, published as Faust, Part One (1808) and Faust, Part Two (1832.) Goethe started writing Faust at age 23 and finished it a few months before his death six decades later. This two-part poetic drama is based on a classic German legend, which in turn is based on an actual magician who lived in northern Germany in the fifteenth century.
Goethe’s Faust tells the story of a brilliant scholar named Heinrich Faust, who is very successful yet unhappy in life. He forsakes God, makes a dangerous deal with the Devil, and exchanges his soul for unlimited power, knowledge, and worldly pleasures. Celebrated for its themes of damnation, witchcraft, sexual betrayal, and freeform philosophic contemplation, Faust is considered one of the greatest works of German literature.
Appreciation for Goethe and his works throughout Europe and America added much to the dissemination of German culture worldwide, with significant effects on scholarship, education, and philosophy, as well as literature throughout the 19th century.
In addition to his literary work, Goethe was also a geologist, botanist, anatomist, physicist, and science historian. His most notable scientific contributions include his theory of plant metamorphosis and his theory of colors.
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If you start to think about your physical or moral condition, you usually find that you are sick.
—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Topics: Health
Every one knows how to value what he has attained in life; most of all the man who thinks and reflects in his old age. He has a comfortable feeling that it is something of which no one can rob him.
—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Whatever necessity lays upon thee, endure; whatever she commands, do.
—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Topics: Perseverance, Resolve, Endurance
What is my life if I am no longer useful to others?
—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Topics: Purpose
I have come to the frightening conclusion that I am the decisive element. It is my personal approach that creates the climate. It is my daily mood that makes the weather. I possess tremendous power to make life miserable or joyous. I can be a tool of torture or an instrument of inspiration, I can humiliate or humor, hurt or heal. In all situations, it is my response that decides whether a crisis is escalated or de-escalated, and a person is humanized or de-humanized. If we treat people as they are, we make them worse. If we treat people as they ought to be, we help them become what they are capable of becoming.
—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Topics: People, Inspiration, Life, Joy, Persona, Humor, Create, Decide, Power
I am what I am, so take me as I am.
—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Topics: Realization, Acceptance, Awareness
Nature is the living, visible garment of God.
—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Topics: Nature
Mastery passes often for egotism.
—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Topics: Egotism, Ego
Beware of dissipating your powers; strive constantly to concentrate them. Genius thinks it can do whatever it sees others doing, but it is sure to repent of every ill-judged outlay.
—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Topics: Power, Focus, Concentration
Whenever I hear people talking about liberal ideas, I am always astounded that men should love to fool themselves with empty sounds. An idea should never be liberal; it must be vigorous, positive, and without loose ends so that it may fulfill its divine mission and be productive. The proper place for liberality is in the realm of the emotions.
—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Topics: Giving, Ideas
Woe to him who would ascribe to something like reason to Chance, and make a religion of surrendering to it.
—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Topics: Luck, Fortune
Life teaches us to be less severe with ourselves and others.
—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Experience is only half of experience
—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Topics: Experience
Nine requisites for contented living: Health enough to make work a pleasure. Wealth enough to support your needs. Strength to battle with difficulties and overcome them. Grace enough to confess your sins and forsake them. Patience enough to toil until some good is accomplished. Charity enough to see some good in your neighbor. Love enough to move you to be useful and helpful to others. Faith enough to make real the things of God. Hope enough to remove all anxious fears concerning the future.
—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Topics: Contentment, Happiness
I will listen to anyone’s convictions, but pray keep your doubts to yourself.
—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Topics: Doubt
Tell me with whom you associate, and I will tell you who you are. If I know what your business is, I know what can be made of you.
—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Method will teach you to win time.
—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Topics: Order
God could cause us considerable embarrassment by revealing all the secrets of nature to us: we should not know what to do for sheer apathy and boredom.
—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Topics: Apathy
As our inclinations, so our opinions.
—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Topics: Opinion
We don’t get to know people when they come to us; we must go to them to find out what they are like.
—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Topics: Humanity
Hope is the second soul of the unhappy.
—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Topics: Hope, Happiness
When all is said the greatest action is to limit and isolate one’s self.
—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Topics: Action
I never believed in trying to do anything. Whatever I set out to do I found I had already accomplished
—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Topics: Accomplishment
People are so constituted that everybody would rather undertake what they see others do, whether they have an aptitude for it or not.
—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Topics: Ability
Their is nothing so terrible as activity without insight.
—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Topics: Goals
Altogether national hatred is something peculiar. You will always find it strongest and most violent where there is the lowest degree of culture.
—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Topics: Nationalism
Enthusiasm is of the greatest value, so long as we are not carried away by it.
—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Nature reacts not only to physical disease, but also to moral weakness; when the danger increases, she gives us greater courage.
—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Deny yourself! You must deny yourself! That is the song that never ends.
—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
A useless life only is an early death.
—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Topics: Purpose, Goals, Aspirations
Excellence is rarely found, more rarely valued.
—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Topics: Excellence
Man errs as long as he struggles.
—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Topics: Mistakes, Failures
One never goes further than when they do not know where they are going.
—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Topics: Goals
A useless life is only an early death.
—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Topics: One liners, Life, Usefullness
To understand one thing well is better than understanding many things by halves.
—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Topics: Talent
I hate all bungling as I do sin, but particularly bungling in politics, which leads to the misery and ruin of many thousands and millions of people.
—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Topics: Politics
How can a man come to know himself? Never by thinking, but by doing. Try to do your duty and you will know at once what you are worth.
—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Topics: Duty, Doing Your Best
Girls we love for what they are; men for what they promise to be.
—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Topics: Girls, Men, Men and Women, Men & Women, Women
Generally speaking, an author’s style is a faithful copy of his mind. If you would write a lucid style, let there first be light in your own mind; and if you would write a grand style, you ought to have a grand character.
—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Topics: Style
Self-knowledge comes from knowing other men.
—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Topics: Identity, Self-Knowledge
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