Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Top 10 Quotes


10

By nothing do men show their character more than by the things they laugh at.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (Maxims and Reflections, 1819)

9

Let's plunge ourselves into the roar of time, the whirl of accident; may pain and pleasure, success and failure, shift as they will - it's only action that can make a man.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (Faust)

8

The whole art of living consists in giving up existence in order to exist.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (Maxims and Reflections, 1819)

7

The greatest happiness for the thinking man is to have fathomed the fathomable, and to quietly revere the unfathomable.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (Sprüche in Prosa, 1819)

6

He is the happiest man who can set the end of his life in connection with the beginning.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (Maxims and Reflections, 1819)

5

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

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (Torquato Tasso, 1790)

4

Love does not dominate, it cultivates. And that is more.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (Das Märchen, 1795)

3

There is strong shadow where there is much light.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (Das Märchen, 1795)

2

Nature's crown is Love. Only through Love can we come near her. She puts gulfs between all things, and all things strive to be interfused. She isolates everything, that she may draw everything together. With a few draughts from the cup of Love she repays for a life full of trouble.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (Maxims and Reflections, 1819)

1

Rest not! Life is sweeping by;
Go and dare before you die.
Something mighty and sublime
Leave behind to conquer time!

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (Haste Not, Rest Not)

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Goethe Biography

Born: August 28, 1749
Died: March 22, 1832

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe was a German polymath. He was successful as an writer, dramatist, novelist, poet and scientist. He has had an great influence throughout Europe.

Notable Works

Goetz von Berlichingen (1773)
The Sorrows of Young Werther (1774)
Iphigenia in Tauris (1779)
Egmont (1788)
Metamorphosis of Plants (1790)
Faust: Part I (1808)
Elective Affinities (1809)
Maxims and Reflections (1819)
Faust: Part II (1832)
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