"Goethe" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... judged as a picture it is, I think, dull. The colouring is dingy, time has not dealt kindly with the background; but the figure of the girl is perfect. I give a reproduction opposite page 190. It was this picture, in one of its replicas, that Goethe describes in his Elective Affinities: a description which procured for it the probably ...
— A Wanderer in Holland • E. V. Lucas
... after the fashion of Cleo de Merode's, gray eyes, and a wide mouth, with pomegranate-red lips. Goethe's dictum that the highest beauty is unobtainable without something of disproportion was exemplified in the case of Maxine Berselius. "Her mouth is too wide," said the women, who, knowing nothing of the philosophy of art, hit upon the defect that ...
— The Pools of Silence • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... at any rate have come to him so soon. The whole man too was so different from what she had thought him to be. Before their marriage no word as to money had ever reached her ears from his lips. He had talked to her of books,—and especially of poetry. Shakespeare and Moliere, Dante and Goethe, had been or had seemed to be dear to him. And he had been full of fine ideas about women, and about men in their intercourse with women. For his sake she had separated herself from all her old friends. ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope
... of "Teddy the Giant Killer," "The Sleeping John Sharp Williams," "Little Red Riding Hood and the Sugar Trust," "Beauty and the Brisbane," "The Seven Aldermen of Ephesus," "Rip Van Fairbanks," and so forth. The fable with Goethe so affectingly relates under the title of "The Erl-King" was known two thousand years ago in Greece as "The Demos and the Infant Industry." One of the most general and ancient of these myths is that Arabian tale of "Ali Baba and the ...
— The Devil's Dictionary • Ambrose Bierce
... last rambling stroll before—Now look! Why tears? You never heard me say "the end." Before ... before I clap them in a book And so get rid of them once and for all. This is their holiday—we'll let them run— Some have escaped already. There goes one ... What, I have often mused, did Goethe mean? So many years ago at Weimar, Goethe said "Heine has all the poet's gifts but love." Good God! But that is all I ever had. More than enough! So much of love to give That no one gave me any in return. And ...
— American Poetry, 1922 - A Miscellany • Edna St. Vincent Millay
... state of things I have bethought myself of throwing, in the words of Goethe, 'my corn into the great seed-field of time,' in the hope that it may blossom to purposes of great public utility. The aid of poetry has hitherto been but partially employed in the spread of a taste for Conveyancing, especially ...
— The Bon Gaultier Ballads • William Edmonstoune Aytoun
... Goethe once said, "Give me the man who bears a heavy load lightly, and looks on a grave matter with a blithe and cheerful eye." And Carlyle has pointed out that "One is scarcely sensible of fatigue whilst he marches to music. The very stars are said to make harmony as they revolve in their spheres. ...
— The True Citizen, How To Become One • W. F. Markwick, D. D. and W. A. Smith, A. B.
... demand. "Is it Anthony, the conqueror of Egypt and the East? I vill show you Cleopatra. Und Burns, and Napoleon, the greatest man what ever lived—vimmen again. I tell you there is no Elba, no St. Helena if it is not for the vimmen. Und vat vill you say of Goethe?" ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... may have peace with the Germans, the peace of exhaustion or the peace that is only a breathing space in a long struggle. We can never have peace with the German idea. It was not the idea of the older German thinkers—of Kant, or of Goethe, who were good Europeans. Kant said that there is nothing good in the world except the good will. The modern German doctrine is that there is nothing good in the world except what tends to the power and glory of the State. The inventor ...
— England and the War • Walter Raleigh
... on the bed a few volumes of Goethe, because I thought it would be so pleasant to read him in his own country. And I decided to take a sponge, together with a small portable bath, because a cold bath is so refreshing the ...
— Diary of a Pilgrimage • Jerome K. Jerome
... said: "In order to love mankind, we must not expect too much of them." And Goethe had a still deeper vision when he said: "Who is the happiest of men? He who values the merits of others, and in their pleasure takes joy, even as ...
— The Higher Powers of Mind and Spirit • Ralph Waldo Trine
... felt that, if one could not have been discovered, the French would have had to invent him. It was necessary for the enthusiastic young romanticists to possess a great indigenous figure to stand beside those imported idols —Shakespeare, Byron, Goethe, and Dante. Sainte-Beuve, who brought out a Ronsard anthology with a critical essay in 1828, showed them where to look. After that, it was as though French literature had begun with Ronsard. He was the "ideal ancestor." He was, as it were, a re-discovered fatherland. ...
— Old and New Masters • Robert Lynd
... composition—the presiding, all-controlling intellect—is just what makes itself felt by absence; and Correggio's special qualities of light and color have now so far vanished from the cupola of the Duomo that the constructive poverty is not disguised. Here, if anywhere in painting, we may apply Goethe's ...
— New Italian sketches • John Addington Symonds
... generation after him abandoned his position for that of universal humanity, or, better, German nationality. His successors intoxicated themselves with deep draughts of the marvelous poetry created by the magic of Goethe and Schiller. They permitted themselves to be rushed along by the liberty doctrines of 1789, they plunged head over heels into the vortex of romanticism, and took an active part in the conspicuous movements ...
— Jewish History • S. M. Dubnow
... the physical states of an insane friend, who was full of the Regeneration of Mankind, and entered his observations in his note-book. Gorki possesses a vast number of these note-books, in which he has written down his impressions. At this period he was also studying the great poets, Shakespeare, Goethe, Byron. Most of all he admired Manfred, who dominated the Elements and Ahriman. Everything out of the common ...
— Maxim Gorki • Hans Ostwald
... noted writers, who distinguished themselves in what is known as the classic period of German literature. This begins with Goethe's return from Italy, when he, with Schiller's aid, formed a classical school of ...
— The Book of the Epic • Helene A. Guerber
... with guide-books and opera-glasses in the days to come, only stray foreigners were to be met, foreigners who most likely were daintily embroidered and powdered aristocrats from England or Germany, if they were not men like Winckelmann, or Goethe, or Beckford. It was the great day, also, for excavations; the vast majority of antiques which we now see in Rome having been dug up at that period; and among the ilexes of the Ludovisi and Albani gardens, among the laurels and rough grass of the Vatican hill, ...
— The Countess of Albany • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
... noble friend would give a longer term to forgotten works of Cervantes, works which nobody now reads, than to Don Quixote. Go to Germany. According to my noble friend's plan, of all the works of Schiller the Robbers would be the most favoured: of all the works of Goethe, the Sorrows of Werter would be the most favoured. I thank the Committee for listening so kindly to this long enumeration. Gentlemen will perceive, I am sure, that it is not from pedantry that I mention the names of so many books and authors. But just as, in our debates on civil affairs, we constantly ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 4 (of 4) - Lord Macaulay's Speeches • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... disappointment to her mother. Left to her own devices at an impressionable age, the girl had developed bookish tastes at the cost of her appearance: influenced by a free-thinking tutor of her brothers', she had read Huxley and Haeckel, Goethe and Schopenhauer. Her wish had been for a university career, but she was not of a self-assertive nature, and when Mrs. Cayhill, who felt her world toppling about her ears at the mention of such a thing, said: "Not while I live!" she yielded, without a further word; and the fact that such an emphatic ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... is, that during this period Valenciennes was the centre of a most interesting spiral movement (to use the phrase of Goethe) in the history of modern Europe. Coming down later to the contest between France, under Louis XIV., and the allies, led by Marlborough and Prince Eugene, we find Valenciennes again playing a leading part. And during the last blind, desperate effort ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... the following words, which deeply impressed themselves on my memory: "Your misfortune is, that you have been obliged to print everything; the public has been able to follow you step by step. I believe that even, a Goethe himself must have suffered the same fate, had he been in your situation." And then he praised my talent for seizing upon the characteristics of nature, and giving, by a few intuitive sketches, pictures of familiar life. My intercourse with him ...
— The True Story of My Life • Hans Christian Andersen
... actually anticipated in his pamphlet Saint Hilaire's theory of the universal type, and supported the hypothesis by describing the notochord of the amphioxus as a cartilaginous vertebral column. The specialists of the day jeered at him, of course, as the specialists in Goethe's time jeered at the plant-metamorphosis. As far as I can make out, the anatomists and zoologists were down on Dr. Anson to a man; that was why his cowardly publishers went back on their bargain. But the ...
— Crucial Instances • Edith Wharton
... the case of Le Sage is not precisely that of a person who publishes, as an original, a translation from a printed work, as Wieland did with his copy of Rowe's Lady Jane Grey, and Lord Byron with his copy of the most musical lines in Goethe. The offence of Le Sage more resembles that imputed (we sincerely believe without foundation) to Raphael; namely, that after the diligent study of some ancient frescoes, he suffered them to perish, in order to conceal his imitation. But we hasten to close these ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 344, June, 1844 • Various
... these young rapins, and wondered at the grave and distinguished members of the Institute into which many of them have afterward developed, it is evident that this studious youth—who read Virgil in the original and Homer and Shakespeare and Goethe in translations—probably had a much more cultivated mind and a much sounder education than most of his fellow students under Delaroche. Seven years after this Norman farmer's son came to Paris, with a pension of 600 francs voted by the town council of Cherbourg, the ...
— Artist and Public - And Other Essays On Art Subjects • Kenyon Cox
... almost childlike, honesty which is typical of all early Teutonic literature. Had a Charles Lamb, a Leigh Hunt, or an Edgar Allan Poe recast these tales, how different would have been their treatment! Before the time of Schiller and Goethe French models prevailed in German literature. These wizards of the pen recovered the German spirit of mystery, and brought back to their haunts gnomes, kobolds, and water-sprites. But the mischief had been done ere they ...
— Hero Tales and Legends of the Rhine • Lewis Spence
... greatest of poets, the greatest scientists, the men who have made the world beautiful and grand, they are all, I tell you, among the damned, if this creed is true. Humboldt, who shed light, and who added to the intellectual wealth of mankind, Goethe, and Schiller, and Lessing, who almost created the German language—all gone! All suffering the wrath of God tonight, and every time an angel thinks of one of those men he gives his harp an ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll - Latest • Robert Green Ingersoll
... co-existence and continual succession of those earlier types; so in the world of mind, at every point of spiritual evolution, a man may meet with an historical individuality who is a concrete embodiment of the particular state to which he has just attained. This, of course, was what Goethe meant when he referred to mysticism as being a frame of mind which one could experience all round and then leave behind. To quote ...
— The Book-Bills of Narcissus - An Account Rendered by Richard Le Gallienne • Le Gallienne, Richard
... country girl, now, had spoken in that tone,' said he to himself, 'it would have been called at least "saucy"—but Mammon's elect ones may do anything. Well—here I come, limping to my new tyrant's feet, like Goethe's bear to Lili's.' ...
— Yeast: A Problem • Charles Kingsley
... familiar with the subtle analysis of the French novelists, or who have in any wise submitted themselves to the influence of German philosophy, may be equally indignant at my ascribing a principality to Scott among the literary men of Europe, in an age which has produced De Balzac, and Goethe.[9] ...
— Frondes Agrestes - Readings in 'Modern Painters' • John Ruskin
... appearing in the 'New Monthly' he thought very clever and brilliant, and was fond of repeating them. You have forgotten, or perhaps never knew, that Motley's first appearance in print was in the 'Collegian.' He brought me one day, in a very modest mood, a translation from Goethe, which I was most happy to oblige him by inserting. It was very prettily done, and will now be a curiosity. . . . How it happened that Motley wrote only one piece I do not remember. I had the pleasure about ...
— Memoir of John Lothrop Motley, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... extensively from The System of Nature in Queen Mab. Furthermore, Volney's Ruins, another important book for Shelley, is directly descended from The System of Nature. On the other side, Holbach was a standing challenge to such writers as Coleridge and Goethe and was reprinted and retranslated extensively in America, where his work was well known to the rationalist ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 1 • Baron D'Holbach
... know all these things and yet, for this very reason, feel justified in holding the views here presented. The writer has dealt with the tendencies of philosophic thought in his works: "The Theory of Cognition of Goethe's World-Concept"; "Truth and Science"; "Philosophy of Freedom"; "Goethe's World Concept" and "Views of the World and Life in ...
— An Outline of Occult Science • Rudolf Steiner
... That our whole strength lies in resigned submission to Him, whatsoever He do to us. For this world, and for the other! The thing He sends to us, were it death and worse than death, shall be good, shall be best; we resign ourselves to God.—"If this be Islam," says Goethe, "do we not all live in Islam?" Yes, all of us that have any moral life; we all live so. It has ever been held the highest wisdom for a man not merely to submit to Necessity,—Necessity will make him submit,—but to know and believe well that the stern thing which Necessity ...
— Sacred Books of the East • Various
... into the thick of human life! Everyone lives it—to not many is it known; and seize it where you will, it is interesting'—GOETHE. ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, Issue 2, February, 1864 • Various
... be adored, and that saying may, with equal justice, be applied to the many literary and artistic friendships of which, pace the elder D'Israeli, history knows so many examples. Petrarch and Boccaccio, Schiller and Goethe, Byron and Shelley immediately occur to the mind in such a connection; but in none of these is the mutual position of giver and receiver of worshipper and worshipped so distinctly marked as in the case ...
— Correspondence of Wagner and Liszt, Volume 1 • Francis Hueffer (translator)
... "A youthful passion," says Goethe, (alluding to one of his own early attachments,) "which is conceived and cherished without any certain object, may be compared to a shell thrown from a mortar by night: it rises calmly in a brilliant track, and ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson
... the poet Goethe's opinion of the Brethren, see Wilhelm Meister (Carlyle's translation), Book VI., "Confessions ...
— History of the Moravian Church • J. E. Hutton
... laugh? It is but a step from the ridiculous to the sublime; and Goethe, who knew women well, was of the same mind ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... realm of immortal song when you gaze on the busts of Goethe and Schiller, and your patriotism is stirred afresh as you behold the monument of Francis Scott Key, author of the Star-Spangled Banner. The Muses also have their abode here on the colonnaded Music Stand or Pavilion erected by Claus Spreckles at a cost of $80,000. Another interesting feature ...
— By the Golden Gate • Joseph Carey
... I had done them a favour. Of that type were my mild, my delicate adventures. The Piazza has a fine old portico of an ancient Temple of Minerva— six fluted columns and a pediment, of beautiful proportions, but sadly battered and decayed. Goethe, I believe, found it much more interesting than the mighty mediaeval church, and Goethe, as a cicerone, doubtless could have persuaded one that it was so; but in the humble society of Murray we shall most ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... had a dinner party, at which was a witty, French, flippant sort of a man, named Lewes,[17] author of a "History of Philosophy," and now writing a life of Goethe, a task for which he must be as unfit as irreligion and sparkling shallowness can make him. But he told stories admirably, and was allowed sometimes to interrupt Carlyle a little—of which one was glad, for that night he was in his acrid ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. X (of X) - America - II, Index • Various
... almost an intellectual wilderness to the rich stores of learning this university contained. It was at this time that he fairly began serious literary study and laid the foundation of his extensive knowledge of books. In one of his vacations he made a little tour in Germany, visiting Goethe, who made a characteristic speech about Byron's recent separation from his wife—namely, that in its circumstances and the mystery involving it it was so poetical that if Byron had invented it he could hardly have found a more fortunate subject for ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XVII. No. 101. May, 1876. • Various
... alone in the universe, each working out its own soul into deed. If there were any all-embracing harmony, one soul through all, he did not see it. Knowles—that old skeptic—believed in it, and called it Love. Even Goethe himself, what was it he said? "Der Allumfasser, der Allerhalter, fasst und erhaelt er nicht dich, mich, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 • Various
... affected by such ideals of history. In the time of Goethe, Cramb reminds us, mankind, culture and humanity were the great words. But upon this love of humanity and culture and love of the homeland a political spirit was engrafted, and this new spirit of Germany has manifestly now led to her ...
— The Psychology of Nations - A Contribution to the Philosophy of History • G.E. Partridge
... to Florence Smollett selected the alternative route by Narni, Terni, Spoleto, Foligno, Perugia, and Arezzo, and, by his own account, no traveller ever suffered quite so much as he did from "dirt," "vermin," "poison," and imposture. At Foligno, where Goethe also, in his travels a score of years or so later, had an amusing adventure, Smollett was put into a room recently occupied by a wild beast (bestia), but the bestia turned out on investigation to be no more or no less than an "English heretic." The food was so filthy that it might have ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett
... made before accepting all the stories of guides and keepers of mysterious dungeons. Doubtless these subterranean apartments were the meeting-places of some secret tribunals, such as the Vehmic courts, which existed in the middle ages in Westphalia. Scott and Goethe have made use of these dungeons in their works, and our students regarded them as a splendid field for the ...
— Down the Rhine - Young America in Germany • Oliver Optic
... verbannen, zu verhindern, dass in dem Gebiete des Beobachtens und Denkens er nicht zu herrschen scheine, im Gebiete des Handelns nicht herrsche, ist das Streben der Vernunft." Wilhelm von Humboldt, Ueber Goethe's Hermann und ...
— The Religious Sentiment - Its Source and Aim: A Contribution to the Science and - Philosophy of Religion • Daniel G. Brinton
... to discard meat entirely. Conversational topics can be too trivial for recreation as well as too serious; and even important subjects can be handled in a light way if necessary. "Clever people are the best encyclopedias," said Goethe; and the great premier Gladstone was a charming man in society, though he never talked on any but serious subjects. He was noted for his ability to pump people dry without seeming in the least to probe. "True conversation is not content with thrust and parry, with mere sword-play of any ...
— Conversation - What to Say and How to Say it • Mary Greer Conklin
... triumphant over a dreary jungle of theological literature, might have been found the works of Goethe, Schiller, Lessing and Freiligrath, and in a secret receptacle behind his little drug cabinet reposed a complete edition of Heine. He was very well read in English theological literature. He thought Luther the greatest of all theologians, but his favourite reading was Tauler. ...
— Kafir Stories - Seven Short Stories • William Charles Scully
... aiding, strengthening, advising, elevating the timidity of inexperience, and the vague aspirations of youth. By the intuition of a kindred mind, you have equalled the learning of Winckelman, and the plastic poetry of Goethe, in the intimate comprehension of the antique. Each work of yours, rightly studied, is in itself a CRITICISM, illustrating the sublime secrets of the Grecian Art, which, without the servility of plagiarism, you have ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... perhaps, a touch of comic suggestiveness in the sublime preoccupation to which we owe their great legacies, that look of Atlas which is always pathetic, when it is not foolish, on the face of a mortal: the grand air of a Goethe, the colossal absorption of a Balzac. Their attitude offends one's sense of the relation of things, and we feel that, after all, we could have spared half their works for a larger share of that delicate instinct for proportion, which is one of the ...
— Prose Fancies • Richard Le Gallienne
... the reply are always the same. Remember Goethe's aphorism: "Alles factische ist schon Theorie." Trustworthy witnesses are constantly deceived, or deceive themselves, in their interpretation of sensible phenomena. No one can prove that the sensible phenomena, in these cases, could ...
— Lectures and Essays • Thomas Henry Huxley
... 1498. Written in Low-German by Nicholas Bauman, under the pseudonym of Hinrek van Alkmer, the satire did a similar work to that done by Rabelais, and Boccaccio, and Piers Plowman. It has since been translated into many languages, and as Goethe at last thought it worth putting into German hexameters, one may still find it worth reading in English Hudibrastic rhymes. The present attractive edition is a reprint of the paraphrase of Von Soltau, published ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 89, March, 1865 • Various
... might have his cell and perform his task, as in a prison. But work involves the entire personality, and the personality finds its complete unfolding, not in detachment, but in association. Talent, says Goethe, thrives in solitude, but character grows in the stream of the world. It is a twofold discovery which a man must make before the highest kind of success lies within his grasp: the discovery of his own individual gift, force, or aptitude, and the ...
— Essays On Work And Culture • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... to the romantic attachment of old Emperor William for that Princess Elize Radziwill, whom he was so determined to marry that he offered his father to abandon his rights of succession to the throne on her account. This King Frederick-William would not permit, and William was compelled to wed Goethe's pupil, Princess Augusta of Saxe-Weimar. A loveless match in every sense of the word, for he remained until the day of Princess Elize's death her most devoted friend and admirer, seeking her advice ...
— The Secret Memoirs of the Courts of Europe: William II, Germany; Francis Joseph, Austria-Hungary, Volume I. (of 2) • Mme. La Marquise de Fontenoy
... called the Belvedere, thus lending this name to the famous statue of Apollo, which stands there. On the continent, anything like a summer-house is often called a Belvedere. One of the most interesting localities which bears this name is the Belvedere just outside of Weimar, in Germany, where Goethe used to act in his own dramas ...
— Essays of Robert Louis Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson
... that fools are not always merely imbecile and obstructive; they are at times ferocious, dangerous, mad. There is in human nature what Goethe used to call a demoniac element, defying all law, and all induction; and we can, I fear, from that one cause, as easily calculate the progress of the human race, as we can calculate that of the vines upon the slopes of AEtna, with the lava ready ...
— The Roman and the Teuton - A Series of Lectures delivered before the University of Cambridge • Charles Kingsley
... that 0 0, or double zero; but to Simon it was more lucky than to the rest of the world. The ball went spinning round—in "its predestined circle rolled," as Shelley has it, after Goethe—and plumped down at last in the double zero. One hundred and thirty-five gold napoleons (louis they were then) were counted out to the delighted painter. "Oh, Diabolus!" cried he, "now it is that I begin to believe in thee! Don't ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... surroundings (society and nature) and to come to grips with reality; it frees him from the incubus of transmitted opinions and borrowed beliefs, and makes him earn his spiritual possessions in the sweat of his face,—mindful of Goethe's warning that "he alone deserves freedom and life who is compelled to battle for them day by day";—it helps him to see things in their right relations, to acquire the proper intellectual and volitional attitude toward his world through an understanding of its meaning and an appreciation ...
— College Teaching - Studies in Methods of Teaching in the College • Paul Klapper
... on the point of escaping, as you say, but I recollect no instance in which he did not pay at last. The myth must have arisen from man's recognition of the inexorable sequence of cause from effect, in the moral world, which even repentance cannot avert. Goethe tries to imagine an atonement for Faust's trespass against one human soul in his benefactions to the race at large; but it is a ...
— Indian Summer • William D. Howells
... restore us in his course Goethe's sage mind and Byron's force; But where will Europe's latter hour Again find Wordsworth's healing power? 2103 MATTHEW ARNOLD: ...
— Handy Dictionary of Poetical Quotations • Various
... conservatism in mere reading. Read, of course, and deeply, widely, thoroughly. But let Discrimination select your books. Choose these intellectual companions as carefully as you pick your personal comrades. Read only "tonic books," as Goethe calls them. Yes, read, and abundantly—but don't stop there. Don't imagine that books, of themselves, will make you wise. Reading, alone, will ...
— The Young Man and the World • Albert J. Beveridge
... a ballad of Goethe's ("De Zauberlehrling") which tells how a magician's apprentice, who had learned enough of his master's craft to be dangerous to himself, once succeeded in raising spirits during the wizard's absence, but was quite unable to dismiss them. A similar tale is told of ...
— The Cornwall Coast • Arthur L. Salmon
... during the century by various thinkers, and especially by Archdeacon Paley, whose Natural Theology exercised a powerful influence down to recent times. The same tendency appeared in other countries, though various philosophers showed weak points in the argument, and Goethe made sport of it in a noted verse, praising the forethought of the Creator in foreordaining the cork tree ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... Page The Eye: its primary Idea 25 Gossiping History—De Quincey's Account of Hatfield 26 Notes upon the Names of some of the Early Inhabitants of Hellas 27 Shakspeare Readings, No. IX. 28 Goethe's Author-Remuneration 29 ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 193, July 9, 1853 • Various
... Goethe pictured, Such as Shelley dreamed of, shed Living warmth and starry brightness Round that ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... immediate pressure of these tremendous questions. So every great work, whether personal or impersonal in intention, conveys to the intelligent reader an impression of the thought behind the skill, and of the character behind the thought. Goethe frankly declared that his works constituted one great confession. All work is confession and ...
— Essays On Work And Culture • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... fact which could be given to it; disturb, obstruct, and will in the end abolish, and render impossible, said answer. No grand Doer in this world can be a copious speaker about his doings. William the Silent spoke himself best in a country liberated; Oliver Cromwell did not shine in rhetoric; Goethe, when he had but a book in view, found that he must say nothing even of that, if it was to succeed ...
— Latter-Day Pamphlets • Thomas Carlyle
... idiotic step of Corson's looks like a final plunge; a fatal fall; a hopeless retrogression. But we must not judge prematurely. "Man advances; but in spiral lines," said Goethe. The river goes forward, in spite of its eddies. You can complete a geometric circle from a minute portion of its curve; but not a human cycle. We can not predict the final issue of a human life until ...
— The Redemption of David Corson • Charles Frederic Goss
... also worthy of note that while Irving lived to unusual fullness of years, yet he never was considered an old man. We do not so much refer to his erect and vigorous frame as to the freshness of his mind. It is said that Goethe, on being asked the definition of a poet, replied: 'One who preserves to old age the feelings of youth.' Such was a leading feature in Mr. Irving's spirit, which, notwithstanding his shadowed hours, was so buoyant and cheerful. ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. VI, June, 1862 - Devoted To Literature and National Policy • Various
... the 176th N. Y., several of us commenced under him the study of German. Here too the teaching was oral; but I was able to buy Oehlschlaeger's German Reader; took special pleasure in memorizing some of the selections, particularly from the poets Gleim, Claudius, Goethe, Schiller, and Uhland; and I was already familiar with some stanzas of Arndt's noble The German Fatherland, sung so often to me by my Lieutenant Meisner, slain by my side in battle. Some of those songs still ring in ...
— Lights and Shadows in Confederate Prisons - A Personal Experience, 1864-5 • Homer B. Sprague
... to worthless ends, to such fruitful account, and stamped it with so grand an impress of personal magnanimity and fortitude. Sir Walter's father reminds one in not a few of the formal and rather martinetish traits which are related of him, of the father of Goethe, "a formal man, with strong ideas of strait-laced education, passionately orderly (he thought a good book nothing without a good binding), and never so much excited as by a necessary deviation from the 'pre-established harmony' of household rules." That description would apply almost wholly ...
— Sir Walter Scott - (English Men of Letters Series) • Richard H. Hutton
... was not TRANSFORMED by its contact with Italian literature; for a conscious desire as well as a conscientious effort is needed for bringing about such a transformation; and to compare the results of his first Italian journey with those of Goethe's pilgrimage across the Alps, for instance, would be palpably absurd. It might even be doubted whether for the themes which he was afterwards likely to choose, and actually did choose, for poetic treatment the materials at his command in French (and English) poetry and prose would not have sufficed ...
— Chaucer • Adolphus William Ward
... labuntur anni[Lat]; sic transit gloria mundi[Lat]; a schoolboy's tale, the wonder of the hour! [Byron]; dum loquimur fugerit invidia aetas[Lat][obs3]; fugit hora[Lat]; all that is transitory is but an illusion [Goethe]. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... philosophizing, nor a metaphysician in spite of his curious searchings in the realm of metaphysics. He sauntered in books as he sauntered by Walden Pond, in quest of what interested him; he "fished in Montaigne," he said, as he fished in Plato and Goethe. He basketed the day's luck, good or bad as it might be, into the pages of his private "Journal," which he called his savings-bank, because from this source he drew most of the material for his books. The "Journal" has recently been printed, in ten volumes. ...
— The American Spirit in Literature, - A Chronicle of Great Interpreters, Volume 34 in The - Chronicles Of America Series • Bliss Perry
... this respect Atala could not do much, for it is not the eternal, but the temporal, which "influences." But, in the same humble opinion, it is extremely inferior. The French Werther[25] (for the attempt to rival Goethe on his own lines is hardly, if at all, veiled) is a younger son of a gentle family in France, whose father dies. He lives for a time with an elder brother, who seems to be "more kin than kind," and a sister Amelie, to whom he ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... nay, buying: very ingenious, with a good deal of pedantry and onesidedness (do you know this German word?), which, I believe, chiefly comes from the Trinity Fellow, who was a great pedant. I have just read Mrs. Austin's Characteristics of Goethe: which I will bring for you when I come. It is well worth knowing something of the mind of certainly a great man, and who has had more effect on his age than any one else. There is something almost fearful in the energy of his ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald - in two volumes, Vol. 1 • Edward FitzGerald
... Goethe said: "It is only necessary to grow old to become more indulgent. I see no fault committed that ...
— Life and Literature - Over two thousand extracts from ancient and modern writers, - and classified in alphabetical order • J. Purver Richardson
... faith—our critic might continue—has but one everlasting note; and it is really the most sceptical and melancholy that has ever been heard, or heard with toleration, in our literature. He repeats it from his favourite apostle Goethe; "all doubt is to be cured only—by action." Certainly, if forgetting the doubt, and the subject of doubt, be the sole cure for it. But that other advice which Mr Carlyle tells us was given, and in vain, to George Fox, the Quaker, at a time when ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various
... as I exist in real life, why shouldn't they exist on the stage too? And I am of the opinion that a smooth, well-sounding voice, probably combined with the Goethe-Schiller-Weimar school of idealistic artifice, is harmful rather than helpful. The only question is whether you would take me, just as ...
— The Dramatic Works of Gerhart Hauptmann - Volume II • Gerhart Hauptmann
... the popular myths recorded in its pages, the good taste manifested in their selection, and the learning and scholarship with which Mr. Keightley has illustrated them. The lovers of folk-lore will be delighted with this new edition of a book, which such men as Goethe, Grimm, Von Hammer, Douce, and Southey have agreed in commending; and of which the appearance is particularly well timed, for a fitter book for fire-side reading, or a Christmas present, we know ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 58, December 7, 1850 • Various
... think He who is alone the foundation and corner-stone, immovable and undeceiving, has become more precious. Oh, how shall I be enough careful to trust him alone? I have got on a little with Gibbon's Rise and Fall, and have begun Neander on the Emperors, finished one volume of Goethe with L., and begun Milton with M., and ...
— A Brief Memoir with Portions of the Diary, Letters, and Other Remains, - of Eliza Southall, Late of Birmingham, England • Eliza Southall
... the same thing is true, and you find works of literature which may be said to be pure art. A little song of Shakespeare or of Goethe is pure art; it is exquisitely beautiful, although its intellectual content may be nothing. A series of pictures is made to pass before your mind by the meaning of words, and the effect is a melody of ideas. Nevertheless, the great mass of the literature we esteem ...
— Autobiography and Selected Essays • Thomas Henry Huxley
... Byron was in search, is Goethe's, 'eine erstarrte Musik' (Stevens's 'Life of Madame de Stael', vol. ...
— The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals, Volume 2. • Lord Byron
... original, or partly original, dramatic work of the same kind, The House of Aspen, which he contributed thirty years later to The Keepsake. Few good words have ever been said for this, and perhaps not many persons have ever cared much for the Goetz, either in the original or in the translation. Goethe did not, in drama at least, understand adventurous matter, and Scott had ...
— Sir Walter Scott - Famous Scots Series • George Saintsbury
... enthusiastically, and Platen, 1796-1835, is so full of Homer and Horace that he can do nothing of his own. Lessing and Herder are devoted Horatians, though Herder thinks that Lessing and Winckelmann are too unreserved in their enthusiasm for the imitation of classical letters. Goethe praises Horace for lyric charm and for understanding of art and life, and studies his meters while composing the Elegies. Nietzsche's letters abound in quotation and phrase. Even the Church in Germany shows the impress ...
— Horace and His Influence • Grant Showerman
... epigram on Wadd on George Fox as Elia on the advantages of routine on publishers his propensity to lie on Fox on Quakers on India House in Parnassus, 651 his after-dinner speeches on Fox on Colebrooke Cottage makes his will at the Mansion House on Physiology on Marlowe and Goethe his cold not a good man on monetary gifts and Thackeray on booksellers breaking Hazlitt on resignation his release his pension on fish ill on magazine payment on puns on Hood's Odes on Signor Velluti on the death of children lines ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... 20, 1797) Sara Wulf, whose maiden name was Meyer and who was later and better known as Frau von Grotthus, wrote from Dresden to Goethe of the consolation found in "Werther" after a disappointing youthful love affair, and of Lessing's conversation with her then concerning Goethe. She reports Lessing's words as follows: "You will feel sometime what a genius Goethe is, Iam sure ...
— Laurence Sterne in Germany • Harvey Waterman Thayer
... gentleman who believes 'to be on the safe side,' or like our dear Shatov—but no, Shatov doesn't come into it. Shitov believes 'on principle,' like a Moscow Slavophil. as for Christianity, for all my genuine respect for it, I'm not a Christian. I am more of an antique pagan, like the great Goethe, or like an ancient Greek. The very fact that Christianity has failed to understand woman is enough, as George Sand has so splendidly shown in one of her great 'novels. As for the bowings, fasting and all the rest of it, I don't understand what they have to do with me. However busy the informers ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... privilege is wholly mine, in making this dedication: as to the second, one word of explanation will suffice for those who have made the greatest poet of Germany, almost of the world, their study, and to whom the story of his life is not unknown. All who have followed the career of GOETHE are familiar with the name and character of DALBERG, and also with the deep and lasting friendship that existed between them, from which SCHILLER too was not absent; recalling to the mind the days ...
— The Poems of Goethe • Goethe
... was partially reclining on a sofa, Eugenie sat near her, and Cavalcanti was standing. Cavalcanti, dressed in black, like one of Goethe's heroes, with varnished shoes and white silk open-worked stockings, passed a white and tolerably nice-looking hand through his light hair, and so displayed a sparkling diamond, that in spite of Monte Cristo's advice the vain young man had been unable to resist putting ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... poetic, and were by far the most powerful that had yet been written in England. Marlowe followed them with 'The Tragical History of Dr. Faustus,' a treatment of the medieval story which two hundred years later was to serve Goethe for his masterpiece; with 'The Jew of Malta,' which was to give Shakspere suggestions for 'The Merchant of Venice'; and with 'Edward the Second,' the first really artistic Chronicle History play. Among the literary ...
— A History of English Literature • Robert Huntington Fletcher
... august Germany is in question in the problem of Waterloo, for, thank heaven! nations are great without the mournful achievements of the sword. Neither Germany, nor England, nor France is held in a scabbard; at this day when Waterloo is only a clash of sabers, Germany has Goethe above Bluecher, and England has Byron above Wellington. A mighty dawn of ideas is peculiar to our age; and in this dawn England and Germany have their own magnificent flash. They are majestic because they think; the high level they bring to civilization is intrinsic to them; it comes from themselves, ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 4 (of 10) • Various
... fluid impressions a world of firmly out-lined objects, it leads one to regard as a thing stark and dead what is in reality full of animation, of vigour, of the fire of life—that eternal process of nature, of which at a later time Goethe spoke as the "Living Garment," whereby God is seen of us, ever in weaving at the ...
— Marius the Epicurean, Volume One • Walter Horatio Pater
... emerged, as it were, as a student and disciple of Goethe. The connection was not wholly fortunate. With much of what Goethe really stood for he was not really in sympathy; but in his own obstinate way, he tried to knock his idol into shape instead of choosing another. He pushed further and further the extravagances of a vivid ...
— The Victorian Age in Literature • G. K. Chesterton
... of wise humanity to speak in enigmas only, so that the highest truths and usefullest laws must be hunted for through whole picture-galleries of dreams, which to the vulgar seem dreams only. Thus Homer, the Greek tragedians, Plato, Dante, Chaucer, Shakspeare, and Goethe, have hidden all that is chiefly serviceable in their work, and in all the various literature they absorbed and re-embodied, under types which have rendered it quite useless to the multitude. What is worse, the two primal declarers ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... vent for it, but as actually animating and forming it. Every additional faculty for exteriorizing states of feeling, giving them a face and a language, is a moral as well as an artistic asset, and Goethe was never wiser ...
— Fighting France - From Dunkerque to Belport • Edith Wharton
... was not easy unless she herself was at Fairoaks. She played with Laura; she read French and German with Laura; and Mr. Pen read French and German along with them. He turned sentimental ballads of Schiller and Goethe into English verse for the ladies, and Blanche unlocked 'Mes Larmes' for him, and imparted to him some of the plaintive outpourings of her ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... sharing of the earth the poet, representing authorship, had been so much preoccupied with higher things that he had left the fleshpots and the loaves and fishes to others, and was to be compensated with a share of the divine honors paid to Jove himself. From Goethe to Carlyle, what a long roll of gods, demigods, and demisemigods it was! It might have been bad for the deities, and the philosopher rather thought it was, but burning incense on the different shrines was an excellent thing for the votaries, and kept them out of all sorts of mischiefs, ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells
... is in competition with her husband, or who has just enough mind to detect his faults, is the extinguisher of genius," said Goethe, who lived up to his blue china and referred to his wife as a convenient loaf of brown bread, which he declared was much more nourishing ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 9 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Reformers • Elbert Hubbard
... great lover of Moore and Byron, and some of their songs which were translated needed no explanation to render them intelligible to him. Wolfe's marvellous poem on the death of Sir John Moore made a deep impression on him, and was a special favorite. Goethe and Heine he liked greatly, especially Goethe's song of Mignon, "Knowst thou the Land," and Heine's Fisher's Song (which Schubert has set to such delicious ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... lessons almost unconsciously; to conquer their desires, to make light of toil and pain and discomfort; the true humanist is well aware that Spartan discipline is incomparably superior to Greek accidence. This is what one of the greatest of them, Goethe, meant when he said: "Anything which emancipates the spirit without a corresponding growth in self-mastery ...
— Preaching and Paganism • Albert Parker Fitch
... wonderful on this south side, so sunny, with feathery trees and deep black shadows. It reminded me of Goethe, ...
— Twilight in Italy • D.H. Lawrence
... about the beautiful park on the Kaiserstrasse and looking in the shop windows at views of Marienbad on postal cards, at yellow-covered French, German, and Russian novels, at pictures of kings, queens, and actresses. He also visited the houses wherein Goethe, Chopin, and Wagner had dwelt. It was four o'clock when he entered the garden of the Bellevue establishment and secured a table. The waiter at his request removed the other chairs, so he had a nook to himself. Not a very large crowd was scattered around; visitors ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... highest thoughts, she is only a toy to him, and a toy which his theologian's pride, his monkish self-debasement, makes him afraid and ashamed of. Abelard has been for her, and ever remains, something like Brahma to Goethe's Bayadere; her love, her love above all for his intrepid intellect, has raised him to a sacredness so great, that his whim, his fame, his peace, his very petulance can be refused nothing; and that, on the ...
— Renaissance Fancies and Studies - Being a Sequel to Euphorion • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
... The Sorrows of Werther is not so popular as when known here chiefly by a wretched version of a wretched French version, and many who read these stanzas will be satisfied that the {378} last conveys, at worst, a distorted notion of the end of Goethe's story. To prevent this misapprehension, I quote from Mr. Boylan's translation all that is told ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 234, April 22, 1854 • Various
... had been a poorer place Had Goethe lived by pleading Or Tasso won a hopeless case With ...
— Briefless Ballads and Legal Lyrics - Second Series • James Williams
... such dark times, are all theories of mere self-education; all proud attempts, like that of Goethe's Wilhelm Meister, to hang self-poised in the centre of the abyss, and there organise for oneself a character by means of circumstances! Easy enough, and graceful enough does that dream look, while all the circumstances themselves—all which stands around—are ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume II. • Charles Kingsley
... which we seek. Our minds, too, are prepared to sympathise with the inanimate world; we have learned to look on the universe as a whole, and ourselves as a part of it, related by close ties of friendship to all its other members Shelley's, Wordsworth's, Goethe's poetry has taught us this; we are all more or less Pantheists, worshippers of 'God in Nature,' convinced of the omnipresence of ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... the famous ball in Brussels this so captivated the Duke of Wellington that he offered her his arm to escort her back to her seat. My mother also remembered the Napoleonic days, and I thought she had been specially favoured in seeing this great man when he entered Rotterdam, and also Goethe. ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... days together Robert would find her the most fascinating playmate, story-teller, and romp, and forget all his precocious interest in history or vulgar fractions. In after years when Robert looked back upon his childhood, he was often reminded of the stories of Goethe's bringing-up. He could recall exactly the same scenes as Goethe describes,—mother and child sitting together in the gloaming, the mother's dark eyes dancing with fun or kindling with dramatic fire, as she carried ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... characters, the development of the plot, and the management of the dialogue—that all the reflection should be molten into the mass of the play, and none of it embossed on the surface; but certainly neither Shakspeare's, nor Schiller's, nor Goethe's dramas answer to this ideal— all of them, besides the philosophy, so to speak, afoot in the progress of the story, contain a great deal standing still, quietly lurking in nooks and corners, and yet exerting a powerful influence on the ultimate effect and explanation of the whole. And ...
— Poetical Works of Edmund Waller and Sir John Denham • Edmund Waller; John Denham |
