Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Quotes About Talent

• The person born with a talent they are meant to use will find their greatest happiness in using it.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Happiness, Teaching, Use

• A really great talent finds its happiness in execution.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Inspirational, Strength, Happiness

• Talent develops in quiet, alone; character is sharpened in the torrent of the world.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Character, World, Quiet

• A talent is formed in stillness, a character in the world's torrent.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Life, Education, Teacher

  "Torquato Tasso". Play by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. Act 1, Scene 2, 1790.

• He who is and remains true to himself and to others has the most attractive quality of the greatest talent.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Life, Happiness, Quality

• A talent can be cultivated in tranquility; a character only in the rushing stream of life.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Character, Rushing, Talent

• Energy will do anything that can be done in the world; and no talents, no circumstances, no opportunities will make a two-legged animal a man without it.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Animal, Opportunity, Men

• It is with art as with love: How can a man of the world,with all his distractions, keep the inwardness which an artist must possess if he hopes to attain perfection? That inwardness which the spectator must share if he is to understand the work as the artist wishes and hopes... Believe me, talents are like virtues; either you must love them for their own sake or renounce them altogether. And they are only recognized and rewarded when we have practised them in secret, like a dangerous mystery."

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Art, Believe, Men

• Mannerism always wants to be finished and doesn't enjoy the process. Genuine, truly great talent, however, finds its greatest satisfaction in the production.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Want, Satisfaction, Talent

• The misery that oppresses you lies not in your profession but in yourself! What man in the world would not find his situation intolerable if he chooses a craft, an art, indeed any form of life, without experiencing an inner calling? Whoever is born with a talent, or to a talent, must surely find in that the most pleasing of occupations! Everything on this earth has its difficult sides! Only some inner drive - pleasure, love - can help us overcome obstacles, prepare a path, and lift as out of the narrow circle in which others tread out their anguished, miserable existences!

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Art, Lying, Men

• Talents are nurtured best in solitude, But character on life's tempestuous seas!

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Character, Sea, Solitude

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1850). “Dramatic works: Comprising Faust, Iphigenia in Tauris, Torquato Tasso, Egmont. Transl. by Anna Swanwick. And Goetz v. Berlichingen. Transl. by Sir Walter Scott. Carefully rev”, p.227

• What you have inherited from your forefathers, it takes work to make it your own.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Talent, Forefathers

• Talent is nurtured in solitude; character is formed in the stormy billows of the world.
  [Ger., Es bildet ein talent sich in der Stille,
  Sich ein Charakter in dem Strom der Welt.]

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Character, Solitude, World

• Mannerism is always longing to have done, and has no true enjoyment in work. A genuine, really great talent, on the other hand, has its greatest happiness in execution.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Hands, Style, Execution

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Johann Peter Eckermann (2014). “Conversations of Goethe with Johann Peter Eckermann”, p.87, Ravenio Books

• In every artist there is a touch of audacity without which no talent is conceivable.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Artist, Audacity, Talent

• We gladly put antiquity above our age but not posterity. Only a father doesn't begrudge his son's talent.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Father, Son, Age

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