“It is truly amazing how far the French have advanced since they stopped being narrow and exclusive in outlook. How well they know their Germans, their Englishmen, better than those do themselves.”
Goethe – p. 9.
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Ilika Polderman
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Ilika Polderman
“What pleases the crowd spreads itself over a limitless field, and, as we already see, meets approval in all countries and regions.”
Goethe – p. 10. -
Anne van der Klift
“This too will contribute to the expanding economic relations for the recognition of common convictions will further a prompter and deeper confidence. On the other hand, when we are dealing with people who think very differently, we will be more cautious as well as more tolerant and forgiving.”
Goethe, p. 11 (VII) -
AudreyMussoni
“The wide world, extensive as it is, is only an expanded fatherland, and will, if looked at aright, be able to give us no more than what our home soil can endow us with also.”
Goethe (p.11) -
harir
‘We should not think that the truth is in Chinese or Serbian literature, in Calderon or the Nibelungen. In our pursuit of models,we ought always to return to the Greeks of antiquity in whose works beautiful man is represented. The rest we contemplate historically and assimilate from it the best as far as we can.’
Goethe,6 -
Jeroen
For there are everywhere in the world such men, to whom the truth and the progress of humanity are of interest and concern. But the road which they pursue, the pace which they keep, is not to everybody’s liking: the particularly agressive wish to advance faster, and so turn aside, and prevent the furthering of that which in turn could further them. The serious-minded must therefore form a quiet, almost secret, company, since it would be futile to set themselves against the current of the day; rather must they manfully strive to maintain their position until the flood has passed.
Goethe, World Literature, p. 10 -
thomasvangrol
“I am more and more convinced,” he continued, “that poetry is the universal possesion of mankind, revealing itself everywhere and at all times in hundreds and hundreds of men. One makes it a little better than another, and swims on the surface a little longer than another – that is all.”
Conversations of Goethe with Johann Peter Eckermann, 165 -
nadja
It is becoming more and more obvious to me that poetry is the common property of all mankind and that it is manifest everywhere and in all ages in hundreds and hundreds of people. The only difference is that some express themselves a little better and are on top a little longer.
Goethe 6 -
daneshvar
Although Goethe was, of course, interested in the archetypal (urphanomenal) aspect of literature, he believed that is lives and is accessible only trough the diversity of different literatures, which must be protected.
Goethe -
bobreijnen
[...] they praise, censure, accept, and reject, imitate and misrepresent us, open our close their hearts to us. All this we must accept with equanimity, since this attitude, taken as a whole, is of great value to us.
Goethe, Weltliteratur