Johann Wolfgang von Goethe: Zitate auf Englisch (seite 6)

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe war deutscher Dichter und Dramatiker. Zitate auf Englisch.
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“Two souls alas! dwell in my breast.”

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Johann Wolfgang von Goethe buch Goethes Faust

Zwey Seelen wohnen, ach! in meiner Brust.
Outside the Gate of the Town
Faust, Part 1 (1808)

“Just trust yourself, then you will know how to live.”

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Johann Wolfgang von Goethe buch Goethes Faust

Mephistopheles and the Student
Faust, Part 1 (1808)

“A thinking man's greatest happiness is to have fathomed what can be fathomed and to revere in silence what cannot be fathomed.”

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Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Maxim 1207, trans. Stopp
Variant translation: The greatest happiness for the thinking man is to have fathomed the fathomable, and to quietly revere the unfathomable.
Maxims and Reflections (1833)

“Someone has said that world history must from time to time be rewritten. When has there been an epoch that made this as necessary as does the present one? You provided a superb example of how it should be done. The hatred of the Romans for the victor, even when he was kindly, presumption upon outmoded privileges, the desire for a different state of affairs without having anything better in view, irrational hopes, haphazard undertakings, alliances with no prospect of benefit, and whatever else is the unhappy retinue of such times—you have described all that magnificently, proving to us that such things really happened in those days.”

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Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

As quoted by Karl Löwith, From Hegel to Nietzsche: The Revolution in Nineteenth Century Thought (1991) from a letter referring to Sartorius' historical study of the rule of the Ostragoths in Italy

“Man errs as long as he strives.”

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Johann Wolfgang von Goethe buch Goethes Faust

Es irrt der Mensch, so lang er strebt.
Variant translation: Man will err while yet he strives.
Prologue in Heaven
Faust, Part 1 (1808)

“Ah, how often I've cursed those foolish pages,
That showed my youthful sufferings to everyone!
If Werther had been my brother, and I'd killed him,
His sad ghost could hardly have persecuted me more.”

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Johann Wolfgang von Goethe buch Römische Elegien

Elegy 2 (First version)
Roman Elegies (1789)

“Much there is I can stand, and most things not easy to suffer
I bear with quiet resolve, just as a god commands it.
Only a few I find as repugnant as snakes and poison —
These four: tobacco smoke, bedbugs, garlic, and †.”

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Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Variant translation: Lots of things I can stomach. Most of what irks me
I take in my stride, as a god might command me.
But four things I hate more than poisons & vipers:
tobacco smoke, garlic, bedbugs, and Christ.
Epigram 67, as translated by Jerome Rothenberg
Venetian Epigrams (1790)
Variante: Much there is I can stand, and most things not easy to suffer
I bear with quiet resolve, just as a god commands it.
Only a few I find as repugnant as snakes and poison —
These four: tobacco smoke, bedbugs, garlic, and †.

“One says a lot in vain, refusing;
The other mainly hears the "No."”

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Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Iphigenie auf Tauris

Act I, sc. iii
Iphigenie auf Tauris (1787)

“America, you have it better than our continent, the old one.”

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Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Amerika, du hast es besser—als unser Kontinent, der alte.
Wendts Musen-Almanach (1831)

“The architect hands over to the rich man with the keys to his palace all the ease and comfort to be found in it without being able to enjoy any of it himself. Must the artist not in this way gradually become alienated from his art, since his work, like a child that has been provided for and left home, can no longer have any effect upon its father? And how beneficial it must have been for art when it was intended to be concerned almost exclusively with what was public property, and belonged to everybody and therefore also to the artist!”

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Johann Wolfgang von Goethe buch Die Wahlverwandtschaften

Dem Reichen übergibt der Baumeister mit dem Schlüssel des Palastes alle Bequemlichkeit und Behäbigkeit, ohne irgend etwas davon mitzugenießen. Muß sich nicht allgemach auf diese Weise die Kunst von dem Künstler entfernen, wenn das Werk wie ein ausgestattetes Kind nicht mehr auf den Vater zurückwirkt? Und wie sehr mußte die Kunst sich selbst befördern, als sie fast allein mit dem öffentlichen, mit dem, was allen und also auch dem Künstler gehörte, sich zu beschäftigen bestimmt war!
Bk. II, Ch. 3, R. J. Hollingdale, trans. (1971), p. 170
Elective Affinities (1809)

“As great, everlasting,
Adamantine laws
Dictate, we must all
Complete the cycles
Of our existence.”

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Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Das Göttliche

Das Göttliche (The Divine) (1783)

“There are occasions … when all consolation is base and it is a duty to despair.”

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Johann Wolfgang von Goethe buch Die Wahlverwandtschaften

Es gibt Fälle, ... wo jeder Trost niederträchtig und Verzweiflung Pflicht ist.
Bk. I, Ch. 18, R. J. Hollingdale, trans. (1971), p. 147
Elective Affinities (1809)

“You ask which form of government is the best? Whichever teaches us to govern ourselves.”

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Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Welche Regierung die beste sei? Diejenige, die uns lehrt, uns selbst zu regieren.
Maxim 353, trans. Stopp
Variant translation by Saunders: Which is the best government? That which teaches us to govern ourselves. (225)
Maxims and Reflections (1833)

“One of the most striking signs of the decay of art is the intermixing of different genres.”

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Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Propylaea (1798) Introduction

“I have often felt a bitter sorrow at the thought of the German people, which is so estimable in the individual and so wretched in the generality. A comparison of the German people with other peoples arouses a painful feeling, which I try to overcome in every possible way.”

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Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Goethes Gespraeche (December 13, 1813)

“All intelligent thoughts have already been thought;
what is necessary is only to try to think them again.”

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Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Alles Gescheite ist schon gedacht worden.
Man muss nur versuchen, es noch einmal zu denken.
Bk. II, Observations in the Mindset of the Wanderer: Art, Ethics, Nature
Wilhelm Meister's Wanderjahre (Journeyman Years) (1821–1829)
Variante: All truly wise thoughts have been thoughts already thousands of times; but to make them truly ours, we must think them over again honestly, till they take root in our personal experience.

“There is no outward mark of politeness that does not have a profound moral reason. The right education would be that which taught the outward mark and the moral reason together.”

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Johann Wolfgang von Goethe buch Die Wahlverwandtschaften

Es gibt kein äußeres Zeichen der Höflichkeit, das nicht einen tiefen sittlichen Grund hätte. Die rechte Erziehung wäre, welche dieses Zeichen und den Grund zugleich überlieferte.
Bk. II, Ch. 5, R. J. Hollingdale, trans. (1971), p. 195
Elective Affinities (1809)

“Who strives always to the utmost,
For him there is salvation.”

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Johann Wolfgang von Goethe buch Goethes Faust

Wer immer strebend sich bemüht,
Den können wir erlösen.
Act V, Mountain Gorges
Faust, Part 2 (1832)