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Goethe Quotes

Poet, scientist, legend

These Goethe quotes highlight his rare double legacy, noting real scientific work in plant morphology alongside the literary reputation many College students only vaguely recall.

Last Updated on May 30, 2021

College
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Nov 07, 2020

Ask Jeeves! Who ever used that thing? College freshmen to find out who Goethe was - that's it.

Quotes by Walter Kirn

Business
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Nov 07, 2020

I often think of the different ways Goethe and Darwin got at evolution. Goethe had the poetic conception of it all right; Darwin worked it out step by step. Who's ahead? And which has any business scoffing at the other?

Quotes by Susan Glaspell

Nov 07, 2020

Goethe died in 1832. As you know, Goethe was very active in science. In fact, he did some very good scientific work in plant morphology and mineralogy. But he was quite bitter at the way in which many scientists refused to grant him a hearing because he was a poet and therefore, they felt, he couldn't be serious.

Quotes by Stephen Jay Gould

Man
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Nov 07, 2020

We know that a man can read Goethe or Rilke in the evening, that he can play Bach and Schubert, and go to his day's work at Auschwitz in the morning.

Quotes by George Steiner

Man
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Nov 07, 2020

Music is the same to me as it was to Goethe - a pleasant noise. I am an eye man, not an ear man.

Quotes by Fritz Lang

Original
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Nov 07, 2020

When I'm working with German audiences, I will call on my Rilke and Goethe in the original.

Quotes by David Whyte

Other lines compare his poetic intuition about evolution to Darwin's step-by-step method, a contrast some still Call one of history's great intellectual rivalries.

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