Johann Wolfgang von Goethe: Frases en inglés (página 7)

“A noble person attracts noble people, and knows how to hold on to them.”

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Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Torquato Tasso

Torquato Tasso, Act I, sc. i (1790)

“What wise or stupid thing can man conceive
That was not thought of in ages long ago?”

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Johann Wolfgang von Goethe libro Fausto

Act II, The Gothic Chamber
Faust, Part 2 (1832)

“Truth is contrary to our nature, not so error, and this for a very simple reason; truth demands that we should recognize ourselves as limited, error flatters us that, in one way or another, we are unlimited.”

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Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Die Wahrheit widerspricht unserer Natur, der Irrthum nicht, und zwar aus einem sehr einfachen Grunde: die Wahrheit fordert, daß wir uns für beschränkt erkennen follen, der Irrthum schmeichelt uns. wir seien auf ein- oder die andere Weise unbegränzt.
Maxim 310, trans. Stopp
Maxims and Reflections (1833)

“The ever-changing display of plant forms, which I have followed for so many years, awakens increasingly within me the notion: The plant forms which surround us were not all created at some given point in time and then locked into the given form, they have been given… a felicitous mobility and plasticity that allows them to grow and adapt themselves to many different conditions in many different places. …How they can be brought together under one concept has slowly become clear to me and that this conception can be enlivened at a higher level [of consciousness]: thus I began to recognize, in the sense perceptible form, a supersensible archetype. Whoever has felt what a rich, saturated thought… has to say, will admit what a passionate movement comes to life in the spirit when we are enthused, and we anticipate the totality of what will evolve step by step…”

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Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Goethe's Story of My Botanical Studies (1831) attributed by Frank Teichmann (tr. Jon McAlice) "The Emergence of the Idea of Evolution in the Time of Goethe" http://www.waldorfresearchinstitute.org/pdf/BAIdeaEvolTeich.pdf
Attributed

“I have found a paper of mine among some others in which I call architecture 'petrified music.' Really there is something in this; the tone of mind produced by architecture approaches the effect of music.”

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Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Conversations with Eckermann (23 March 1829) - Often quoted as "Architecture is frozen music."

“Piety is not an end but a means to attain by the greatest peace of mind the highest degree of culture.”

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Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Maxim 519, trans. Stopp
Maxims and Reflections (1833)

“When young, one is confident to be able to build palaces for mankind, but when the time comes one has one's hands full just to be able to remove their trash.”

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Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Letter to Johann Kaspar Lavatar (6 March 1780)

“Talking is a necessity, listening is an art.”

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Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Reden ist uns ein Bedürfnis, Zuhören ist eine Kunst.
According to http://falschzitate.blogspot.de/2017/04/reden-ist-uns-ein-bedurfnis-zuhoren-ist.html pure invention.
Misattributed

“Nowhere would anyone grant that science and poetry can be united. They forgot that science arose from poetry, and failed to see that a change of times might beneficently reunite the two as friends, at a higher level and to mutual advantage.”

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Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Von andern Seiten her vernahm ich ähnliche Klänge, nirgends wollte man zugeben, daß Wissenschaft und Poesie vereinbar seien. Man vergaß, daß Wissenschaft sich aus Poesie entwickelt habe, man bedachte nicht, daß, nach einem Umschwung von Zeiten, beide sich wieder freundlich, zu beiderseitigem Vorteil, auf höherer Stelle, gar wohl wieder begegnen könnten.
Zur Morphologie (On Morphology), (1817)

“Very often when we have found ourselves forever separated from what we had intended to achieve, we have already, on our way, found something else worth desiring.”

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Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Und doch sehr oft, wenn wir uns von dem Beabsichtigten für ewig getrennt sehen, haben wir schon auf unserm Wege irgend ein anderes Wünschenswerthe gefunden, etwas uns Gemäßes, mit dem uns zu begnügen wir eigentlich geboren sind.
Maxim 68, trans. Stopp
Maxims and Reflections (1833)

“Art is in itself noble; that is why the artist has no fear of what is common. This, indeed, is already ennobled when he takes it up.”

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Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Die Kunst an und für sich selbst ist edel; deßhalb fürchtet sich der Künstler nicht vor dem Gemeinen. Ja indem er es aufnimmt, ist es schon geadelt, und so sehen wir die größten Künstler mit Kühnheit ihr Majestätsrecht ausüben.
Maxim 61, trans. Stopp
Maxims and Reflections (1833)

“And now the sagacious reader, who is capable of reading into these lines what does not stand written in them, but is nevertheless implied, will be able to form some conception of the serious feelings with which I then set foot in Emmendingen.”

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Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Autobiography: Truth and Poetry Book xviii. London 1884 p. 115 books.google.de http://books.google.de/books?id=ff-TMQCqkPQC&pg=PA115

“This is why we may say that those who parade piety as a purpose and an aim mostly turn into hypocrites”

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Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Maxim 520, trans. Stopp
Maxims and Reflections (1833)

“I’m sorry for people who make a great to-do about the transitory nature of things and get lost in meditations of earthly nothingness. Surely we are here precisely so as to turn what passes into something that endures; but this is possible only if you can appreciate both.”

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Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Ich bedauere die Menschen, welche von der Vergänglichkeit der Dinge viel Wesens machen und sich in Betrachtung irdischer Nichtigkeit verlieren. Sind wir ja eben deßhalb da, um das Vergängliche unvergänglich zu machen; das kann ja nur dadurch geschehen, wenn man beides zu schätzen weiß.
Maxim 155, trans. Stopp
Maxims and Reflections (1833)

“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.”

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Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Maxim 611, trans. Stopp
Maxims and Reflections (1833)

“None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free.”

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Johann Wolfgang von Goethe libro Elective Affinities

Niemand ist mehr Sklave, als der sich für frei hält, ohne es zu sein.
Bk. II, Ch. 5; source: Die Wahlverwandtschaften, Hamburger Ausgabe, Bd. 6 (Romane und Novellen I), dtv Verlag, München, 1982, p. 397 (II.5)
Elective Affinities (1809)