You can’t, if you can’t feel it, if it never Rises from the soul, and sways The heart of every single hearer, With deepest power, in simple ways. You’ll sit forever, gluing things together, Cooking up a stew from other’s scraps, Blowing on a miserable fire, Made from your heap of dying ash. Let apes and children praise your art, If their admiration’s to your taste, But you’ll never speak from heart to heart, Unless it rises up from your heart’s space.
Johann Wolfgang von GoetheThe modern age has a false sense of superiority, because of the great mass of data at its disposal. But the valid criterion of distinction is rather the extent to which man knows how to form and master the material at his command.
Johann Wolfgang von GoetheWhat must the English and French think of the language of our philosophers when we Germans do not understand it ourselves?
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe