Quote #133

The best genius is that which absorbs and assimilates everything without doing the least violence to its fundamental destiny - that which we call character - but rather improving it and enhancing it as far as possible.

More from Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  1. Talent develops in quiet places, character in the full current of human life.
  2. The deed is everything, the glory naught.
  3. Reason can never be popular. Passions and feelings may become popular, but reason will always remain the sole property of a few eminent ind…
  4. The effects of good music are not just because it's new; on the contrary music strikes us more the more familiar we are with it.
  5. [Prague is the] prettiest gem in the stone crown of the world...
  6. The first and last thing required of genius is the love of truth.
  7. Only when we know little do we know anything; doubt grows with knowledge.
  8. The intelligent man finds almost everything ridiculous, the sensible man hardly anything.

All Johann Wolfgang von Goethe quotes