"One does not get to know that one exists until one rediscovers oneself in others." (Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, 1775)
"The imagination lurks as the most powerful foe. It has an irresistible affinity for the absurd. Even cultured individuals are subject to this impulse to a high degree. It is hostile to all civilized life and it confronts our decorous society with a reversion to the innate rudeness of the savage and his love of grimaces." (Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, "Annals", 1805)
"Genuine works of art carry their own aesthetic theory implicit within them and suggest the standards according to which they are to be judged." (Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, 1808)
"The highest gift we have received from God and nature is life, the rotating movement of the monad about itself, knowing neither pause nor rest. The impulse to nurture this life is ineradicably implanted in each individual, although its specific nature remains a mystery to ourselves and to Others." (Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, "On Theory of Color", 1810)
"The modern age has a false sense of superiority because of the great mass of data at its disposal. But the valid criterion of distinction is rather the extent to which man knows how to form and master the material at his command." (Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, "On Theory of Color", 1810)
"As soon as we proceed from the principle that knowledge and faith are not designed to cancel each other out but rather to supplement each other, we are on the right path pointing to just solutions." (Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, 1813)
"Faith is a sacred vessel in which each individual is prepared to sacrifice his feeling, his reason, his imagination, to the best of his ability. In the case of knowledge exactly the opposite holds true, I said. Not that one knows but what one knows, how well and how much one knows, is what counts. That is why knowledge is a subject for argument, inasmuch as it may be corrected, expanded, and concealed. Knowledge begins with isolated facts; it is endless and formless, and we can at most dream of grasping it as a totality. Hence it is diametrically opposed to faith." (Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, "The Autobiography", 1814)
"Idea and experience will never coincide in the center. Only art and action can effect a synthesis." (Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, 1816)
"When all is said and done, nothing suits the theater except what also makes a symbolic appeal to the eyes a significant action suggesting an even more significant one." (Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, "Shakespeare and No End", 1816)
"That which is formed is straightway transformed again, and if we would to some degree arrive at a living intuition of Nature, we must on our part remain forever mobile and plastic, according to her own example." (Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, "Morphology", 1817)
"As we contemplate the edifice of the universe, in its vastest extension, in its minutest divisibility, we cannot resist the notion that an idea underlies the whole, according to which God and Nature creatively interact forever and ever. Intuition, contemplation, reflection give us an approach to these mysteries, We are emboldened to venture upon ideas; in a more modest mood we fashion concepts that might bear some analogy to those primal beginnings." (Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, "Doubts and Resignation", 1820)
"Even in the sciences, mere knowing is of no avail. It is always a matter of doing." (Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, "Maxims and Reflections", 1822)
"General concepts and great conceit are always poised to make a terrible mess of things." (Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, "Maxims and Reflections", 1822)
"The most foolish of all errors is for young people to believe that they lose their originality by accepting the truths which have already been accepted by their predecessors." (Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, "Maxims and Reflections", 1822)
"When Nature begins to reveal her manifest mystery to a man, he feels an irresistible longing for her worthiest interpreter art." (Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, "Maxims and Reflections", 1823)
"Truth is like a torch, but of gigantic proportions. It is all we can do to grope our way with dazzled eyes, in fear even of getting scorched." (Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, "Maxims and Reflections", 1824)
"Man was not born to solve the problems of the universe, but rather to seek to lay bare the heart of the problem and then confine himself within the limits of what is amenable to understanding." (Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, 1825)
"The true, which is identical with the divine, transcends our grasp as such. We perceive it only as reflection, parable, symbol, in specific and related manifestations. We become aware of it as life that defies comprehension, and for all that we cannot renounce the wish to comprehend. " (Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, "Essay on Meteorology", 1825)
"Error finds ceaseless repetition in deed, for which reason one must never tire of repeating the truth in words." (Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, "Maxims and Reflections", 1826)
"Knowing is possible only when one knows little. As one comes to experience more, one gets gradually assailed by doubts. [...] No phenomenon can be explained, taken merely by itself. Only many, surveyed in their connection, and methodically arranged, finally yield something that can pass for theory." (Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, 1828)
"The greatest art, both in teaching and in life itself, consists in transforming the problem into a postulate." (Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, 1928)
"For truth is simple and without fuss, whereas error affords opportunity for dissipating time and energy." (Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, 1829)
"Man must cling to the belief that the incomprehensible is comprehensible. Else he would give up investigating. " (Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, "Maxims and Reflections", 1829)
"To concentrate on a craft is the best procedure. For the person of inferior gifts it will always remain a craft. The more gifted person will raise it to an art. And as for the man of highest endowment, in doing one thing he does all things; or, to put it less paradoxically, in the one thing that he does properly, he sees a symbol of all things that are done right. " (Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, 1829)
"'Nature does nothing for nothing' is an old Philistine saying. She is eternally alive, prodigal and extravagant in her workings, to keep the infinite ever present, because nothing can endure without change." (Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, 1831)
"The desire to explain what is simple by what is complex, what is easy by what is difficult, is a calamity affecting the whole body of science, known, it is true, to men of insight, but not generally admitted." (Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, "Maxims and Reflections", 1833)
"With the growth of knowledge our ideas must from time to time be organized afresh. The change takes place usually in accordance with new maxims as they arise, but it always remains provisional. (Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, "Maxims and Reflections", 1833)"Nothing hurts a new truth more than an old error." (Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, "Sprüche in Prosa", 1840)
"All truly wise thoughts have been thought already thousands of times; but to make them truly ours, we must think them over again honestly, till they take root in our personal experience." (Johann Wolfgang von Goethe) "Everything is simpler than one can imagine, at the same time more involved than can be comprehended." (Johann Wolfgang von Goethe)"In nature we never see anything isolated, but everything in connection with something else which is before it, beside it, under it and over it." (Johann Wolfgang von Goethe)"In tearing down a position, all false arguments carry weight; not so in building up. Only the truth is constructive." (Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, "Maxims and Reflections" [posthumous])
"It requires a much higher organ to seize upon truth than it does to defend error." (Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, "Maxims and Reflections" [posthumous])
"Nature, despite her seeming diversity, is always a unity, a whole; and thus, when she manifests herself in any part of that whole, the rest must serve as a basis for that particular manifestation, and the latter must have a relationship to the rest of the system." (Johann Wolfgang von Goethe)"No phenomenon can be explained in and of itself; only many comprehended together, methodically arranged, in the end yield something that could be regarded as theory." (Johann Wolfgang von Goethe)
"That is the way of youth and life generally, that we usually come to understand the strategy only after the campaign is over. " (Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, "The Autobiography", [posthumous])
"The highest happiness of man as a thinking being is to have probed what is knowable and quietly to revere what is unknowable." (Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, "Maxims and Reflections" [posthumous])
"The orbits of certainties touch one another; but in the interstices there is room enough for error to go forth and prevail." (Johann Wolfgang von Goethe)
"The tissue of the world is built from necessities and randomness; the intellect of men places itself between both and can control them; it considers the necessity and the reason of its existence; it knows how randomness can be managed, controlled, and used." (Johann Wolfgang von Goethe)
"Thinking by analogy is not to be despised. Analogy has this merit, that it does not settle things - does not pretend to be conclusive. On the other hand, that induction is pernicious which, with a preconceived end in view, and working right forward for only that, drags in its train a number of unshifted observations, both false and true." (Johann Wolfgang von Goethe)
"Thinking is more interesting than knowing, but not more so than beholding." (Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, "Maxims and Reflections", [posthumous])
