Once one knows what really matters, one ceases to be voluble. And what does really matter? That is easy: thinking and doing, doing and thinking---and these are the sum of all wisdom...Both must move ever onward in life, to and fro, like breathing in and breathing out. Whoever makes it a rule to test action by thought, thought by action, cannot falter, and if he does, will soon find his way back to the right road.

-:- Goethe Reading List by Katharena -:-

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe: Main Page | an Impressive Goethe Poetry Sampler | Thought Provoking Quotes by Goethe | Goethe : One of the Giants of World Literature | Goethe's Extremely Happy Childhood | Literary and Social Duties -- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe | Goethe Takes Refuge in Nature | Goethe's Relation to the Romantics | Mr. Goethe's Epistolary Style, Social Conduct | Goethe's Introspection and Religious Mysticism | Johann Wolfgang von Goethe : Books and Reviews | Katharena's Essential Goethe, Ground Zero!

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, born Aug. 28, 1749, Frankfurt, Germany, died March 22, 1832, Weimar, Saxe-Weimar. One of the giants of world literature, Goethe was perhaps the last European to attempt the mastery and many-sidedness of the great Renaissance personalities: critic, journalist, painter, theatre manager, statesman, educationalist, natural philosopher. The bulk and diversity of Goethe's output is in itself phenomenal: Goethe's writings on science alone fill about 14 volumes. In the lyric vein Goethe displayed a command of a unique variety of theme and style; in fiction he ranged from fairy tales, which have proved a quarry for psychoanalysts, through the poetic concentration of his shorter novels and Novellen (novellas) to the “open,” symbolic form of Wilhelm Meister; in the theatre, from historical, political, or psychological plays in prose through blank-verse drama to his Faust, one of the masterpieces of modern literature. Goethe achieved in his 82 years a wisdom often termed Olympian, even inhuman; yet almost to the end he retained a willingness to let himself be shaken to his foundations by love or sorrow. Goethe disciplined himself to a routine that might armour him against chaos; yet he never lost the power of producing magical short lyrics in which the mystery of living, loving, and thinking was distilled into sheer transparency.