Everything which is properly business we must keep carefully separate from life. Business requires earnestness and method; life must have a freed handling. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe More Quotes by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe More Quotes From Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Art is a severe business; most serious when employed in grand and sacred objects. The artist stands higher than art, higher than the object. He uses art for his purposes, and deals with the object after his own fashion. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe fashion serious art In art, to express the infinite one should suggest infinitely more than is expressed. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe infinite should art Many young painters would never have taken their pencils in hand if they could have felt, known, and understood, early enough, what really produced a master like Raphael. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe taken hands art The connoisseur of art must be able to appreciate what is simply beautiful, but the common run of people is satisfied with ornament. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe running beautiful art The misfortune in the state is, that nobody can enjoy life in peace, but that everybody must govern; and in art, that nobody will enjoy what has been produced, but that every one wants to reproduce on his own account. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe enjoy-life want art The summit charms us, the steps to it do not; with the heights before our eyes, we like to linger in the plain. It is only a part of art that can be taught; but the artist needs the whole. He who is only half instructed speaks much and is always wrong; who knows it wholly is content with acting and speaks seldom or late. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe acting eye art We learn to treasure what is above this earth; we long for revelation, which nowhere burns more purely and more beautifully than in the New Testament. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe treasure earth long It is commonly the personal character of a writer which gives him his public significance. It is not imparted by his genius. Napoleon said of Corneille, "Were he living I would make him a king;" but he did not read him. He read Racine, yet he said nothing of the kind of Racine. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe kings giving character Our hands we open of our own free will, and the good flies, which we can never recall. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe benevolence free-will hands It is belief in the Bible, the fruits of deep meditation, which has served me as the guide of my moral and literary life. I have found capital safely invested and richly productive of interest, although I have sometimes made but a bad use of it. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe fruit meditation bible Blood is a juice of rarest quality. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe juice quality blood Dispel not, the happy delusions of children. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe delusion children In praising or loving a child, we love and praise not that which is, but that which we hope for. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe praise children We should treat children as God does us, who makes us happiest when He leaves us under the influence of innocent delusions. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe childhood doe children What in us the women leave uncultivated, children cultivate when we retain them near us. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe children A school of art or of anything else is to be looked on as a single individual, who keeps talking to himself for a hundred years, and feels an extreme satisfaction with his own circle of favorite ideas, be they ever so silly. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe silly art school Man believes himself always greater than he is, and is esteemed less than he is worth. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe conceit men believe No wonder we are all more or less pleased with mediocrity, since it leaves us at rest, and gives the same comfortable feeling as when one associates with his equals. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe mediocrity feelings giving The miller imagines that the corn grows only to make his mill turn. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe mills corn imagine Man cannot persist long in a conscious state, he must throw himself back into the unconscious, for his root lives there. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe roots men long
