The greatest piece of folly is that every man thinks himself compelled to hand down what people think they have known.

No wise combatant underestimates their antagonist.

What is the freedom of the most free? To do what is right!

Pain and pleasure, good and evil, come to us from unexpected sources. It is not there where we have gathered up our brightest hopes, that the dawn of happiness breaks. It is not there where we have glanced our eye with affright, that we find the deadliest gloom. What should this teach us? To bow to the great and only Source of light, and live humbly and with confiding resignation.

The real scholar learns how to evolve the unknown from the known, and draws near the master.

What am I then...? Everything that I have seen, heard, and observed I have collected and exploited. My works have been nourished by countless different individuals, by innocent and wise ones, people of intelligence and dunces. Childhood, maturity and old age all have brought me their thoughts....their perspectives on life. I have often reaped what others have sowed. My work is the work of a collective being that bears the name Goethe.

It would be a lowly art that allowed itself to be understood all at once.