Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Quotes About Poetry

• He who knows no foreign languages knows nothing of his own.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Inspiration, Learning, Knowing

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (2012). “The Goethe Treasury: Selected Prose and Poetry”, p.293, Courier Corporation

• The true poet is called to take in the splendor of the world and for that reason will always be inclined to praise rather than tofind fault.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Poetry, World, Faults

• Give shape, artist! don't talk!
  Your poem be but a breath.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Art, Giving, Poetry

• Don't feel guilty if you don't immediately love your stepchildren as you do your own, or as much as you think you should. Everyoneneeds time to adjust to the new family, adults included. There is no such thing as an "instant parent."
  Actually, no concrete object lies outside of the poetic sphere as long as the poet knows how to use the object properly.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Lying, Love You, Thinking

• Modern poets add a lot of water to their ink.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Water, Poetry, Ink

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, W. B. Rönnfeldt (1898*). “Goethe's Criticisms, Reflections, and Maxims”

• After all, poets shouldn't be their own interpreters and shouldn't carefully dissect their poems into everyday prose; that would mean the end of being poets. Poets send their creations into the world, it is up to the reader, the aesthetician, and the critic to determine what they wanted to say with their creations.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Mean, Poetry, Everyday

• What makes poetry? A full heart, brimful of one noble passion.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Passion, Heart, Poetry

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, John Stuart Blackie (1883). “The Wisdom of Goethe”, Edinburgh, W. Blackwood

• All lyrical work must, as a whole, be perfectly intelligible, but in some particulars a little unintelligible.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Poetry, Littles, Lyrical

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (2013). “Delphi Works of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (Illustrated)”, p.3567, Delphi Classics

• True art can only spring from the intimate linking of the serious and the playful.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Art, Spring, Poetry

• If you want to understand poetry,
  You have to go to its origin,
  If you want to understand the poet,
  You have to go to the Poet's home.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Home, Poetry, Want

• The question "From where does the poet get it?" addresses only the what, nobody learns anything about the how when asking that question.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Poetry, Doe, Asking

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