“I am contented, happy, and consequently a bad historian.” — Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Copy Share Image
Writing history is a method of getting rid of the past. — Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Copy Share Image
We all of us live upon the past, and through the past we are destroyed. — Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Copy Share Image
The history of knowledge is a great fugue in which the voices of the nations one after the other emerge. — Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Copy Share Image
The work of art may have a moral effect, but to demand moral purpose from the artist is to make him ruin… — Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Copy Share Image
The whole history of the Christian Church is a mixture of errors and violence. — Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Copy Share Image
The best benefit we derive from history is the enthusiasm it excites. — Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Copy Share Image
The history of science is science itself; the history of the individual, the individual. — Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Copy Share Image
He who cannot draw on three thousand years is living from hand to mouth. — Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Copy Share Image
We can stand only a certain amount of unhappiness; anything beyond that annihilates us or passes us by, leaving us apathethetic. — Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Copy Share Image
The thinker makes a great mistake when he asks after cause and effect. They both together make up the indivisible phenomenon. — Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Copy Share Image
“The deepest, the only theme of human history, compared to which all others are of subordinate importance, is the conflict of scepticism… — Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Copy Share Image
If one does not know what went on for the last three thousand years, he or she remains ignorant, merely surviving from… — Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe Copy Share Image
It seems to me that every phenomenon, every fact, itself is the really interesting object. Whoever explains it, or connects it with… — Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Copy Share Image
Not all that is presented to us as history has really happened; and what really happened did not actually happen the way… — Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Copy Share Image
True works of art contain their own theory and give us the measurement according to which we should judge them. — Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Copy Share Image
I never believed in trying to do anything. Whatever I set out to do I found I had already accomplished. — Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Copy Share Image
All lyrical work must, as a whole, be perfectly intelligible, but in some particulars a little unintelligible. — Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Copy Share Image
We know accurately only when we know little, with knowledge doubt increases. — Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Copy Share Image
It is easier to perceive error than to find truth, for the former lies on the surface and is easily seen, while the latter… — Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Copy Share Image
The connoisseur of art must be able to appreciate what is simply beautiful, but the common run of people is satisfied with ornament — Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe Copy Share Image
Let us not dream that reason can ever be popular. Passions, emotions, may be made popular; but reason remains ever the property of an… — Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Copy Share Image
