The Life and Works of Goethe: with Sketches of His Age and Contemporaries, Volume 1Ticknor and Fields, 1856 - 593 pages |
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acquaintance admiration Autobiography Beaumarchais beauty called character charming Christian Clavigo confessed Corona Schröter court critical dear delight drama Drusenheim Duke eyes father feel felt Frankfurt Frau von Stein Frederika French friendship genius German give Goethe Goethe's Götz von Berlichingen Greek hand happy heart Herder honor imagination imitation influence Jena Jerusalem Julius Cæsar Karl August Kestner Klettenberg Klopstock Leipsic less letter literature lived look Lotte lover marriage married Merck mind moral mother nature never night noble once passed passion play poem poet poetic poetry prince reader scene Schiller seems sentimental servant Sesenheim Shakespeare sister song soul speak Spinoza spirit Strasburg Sturm und Drang tendency thee things thou thought Tiefurt tion translated truth wandering Weimar Weislingen Werther Wetzlar Weyland Wieland wife Wolfgang woman word writes wrote young youth
Popular passages
Page 299 - Prometheus is scurrilously fluent. Shelley never makes his Titan flinch. He stands there as the sublime of endurance : " To suffer woes which Hope thinks infinite; To forgive wrongs darker than death or night ; To defy power which seems omnipotent ; To love and bear ; to hope till Hope creates From its own wreck the thing it contemplates ; Neither to change, nor falter, nor repent.
Page 77 - I know your heart, and am right sure and certain that 'tis far too merciful to let her die, or even so much as suffer, for want of aid. Thou knowest who said, "Let him who is without sin among you cast the first stone at her!
Page 192 - Within its own creation, or in thine, Maternal Nature ! for who teems like thee, Thus on the banks of thy majestic Rhine? There Harold gazes on a work divine, A blending of all beauties; streams and dells, Fruit, foliage, crag, wood, cornfield, mountain, vine, And chiefless castles breathing stern farewells From gray but leafy walls, where Ruin greenly dwells.
Page 30 - Circumstance, it would be nearer the mark to say that Man is the architect of Circumstance.
Page 75 - Shakespeare's imagery bubbles up like a perpetual spring : to say that it repeatedly overflows, is only to say that his mind was lured by its own sirens away from the direct path. He did not master his Pegasus at all times, but let the wild careering creature take its winged way. Goethe, on the contrary, always masters his : perhaps because his steed had less of restive life in its veins. Not only does he master it, and ride with calm assured grace, he seems so bent on reaching the goal, that he...
Page 139 - They say, best men are moulded out of faults; And, for the most, become much more the better For being a little bad: so may my husband.
Page 26 - Ich bin von keiner Schule; Kein Meister lebt, mit dem ich buhle ; Auch bin ich weit davon entfernt, Daß ich von Toten was gelernt.
Page 154 - Moved by this impulse, I began one morning to write, without having made any previous sketch or plan. I wrote the first scenes, and in the evening they were read aloud to Cornelia. She...
Page 139 - Es bildet ein Talent sich in der Stille, Sich ein Charakter in dem Strom der Welt.
Page 149 - He had experienced, and he could paint (no one better), the exquisite devotion of woman to man ; but he had scarcely ever felt the peculiar tenderness of man for woman, when that tenderness takes the form of vigilant protecting fondness. He knew little, and that not until late in life, of the subtle interweaving of habit with affection, which makes life saturated with love, and love itself become dignified through the serious aims of life. He knew little of the exquisite companionship of two souls...