Quickly Quotable #23 – Goethe

A creation of importance can only be produced when its author isolates himself, it is a child of solitude.

Beauty is a manifestation of secret natural laws, which otherwise would have been hidden from us forever.

Every day we should hear at least one little song, read one good poem, see one exquisite picture, and, if possible, speak a few sensible words.

The person born with a talent they are meant to use will find their greatest happiness in using it.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, born 28 August 1749 in Frankfurt am Main, Germany. Died 22 March 1832.  Goethe is best known as the German dramatist known for Faust. Early in his career he studied law, and in 1775 he joined the court of Duke Charles Augustus. For ten years he was a high-ranking minister of the state of Weimar, while at the same time working on plays, poems, essays, novels and scientific studies. He first gained literary fame with the 1773 play Götz von Berlichingen and the 1774 novel Die Leiden des Jungen Werthers (The Sorrows of Young Werther), and in 1775 he began work on his masterpiece, Faust. In the story Faust sells his soul to Satan in exchange for power and knowledge. The first part was published in 1808 and the second part was published in 1832, by which time Goethe was at the end of a sensational literary career and an idol of the German Romantics. His other works include essays on botany and physiology, an autobiography, Dichtung und Wahrheit (Poetry and Truth, 1811-33), the prototypical Bildungsroman, Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre (Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship, 1796), the epic poem Hermann und Dorothea (1798) and the drama Torquato Tasso (1790).

For those who are German pronunciation challenged, Goethe rhymes with skirt-a [GURT-a].

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Bio found at Answers.com

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