Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Quotes About Appearance

• Beauty is a primeval phenomenon, which itself never makes its appearance, but the reflection of which is visible in a thousand different utterances of the creative mind, and is as various as nature herself.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Beauty, Nature, Reflection

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Johann Peter Eckermann (2014). “Conversations of Goethe with Johann Peter Eckermann”, p.238, Ravenio Books

• The highest problem of any art is to cause by appearance the illusion of a higher reality.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Art, Reality, Causes

• It is not given to us to grasp the truth, which is identical with the divine, directly. We perceive it only in reflection, in example and symbol, in singular and related appearances. It meets us as a kind of life which is incomprehensible to us, and yet we cannot free ourselves from the desire to comprehend it.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Reflection, Desire, Example

• The biggest problem with every art is by the use of appearance to create a loftier reality.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Art, Reality, Use

• The thinking person has the strange characteristic to like to create a fantasy in the place of the unsolved problem, a fantasy that stays with the person even when the problem has been solved and truth made its appearance.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Thinking, Strange, Fantasy

• The true, prescriptive artist strives after artistic truth; the lawless artist, following blind instinct, after an appearance of naturalness. The one leads to the highest peaks of art, the other to its lowest depths.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Art, Depth, Blind

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, John Gage (1980). “Goethe on Art”, p.11, Univ of California Press

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