Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Quotes

All the charming and beautiful things, from the Song of Songs, to bouillabaisse, and from the nine Beethoven symphonies to the Martini cocktail, have been given to humanity by men who, when the hour came, turned from tap water to something with color in it, and more in it than mere oxygen and hydrogen.

A man of genius has a right to any mode of expression.

If you stick with a vision, it might not all work, but some of it will be absolute genius. To me, 15 minutes worth of absolute genius in a film is so much better than two hours of mediocrity. I would rather pay to see something different like that.

Tradition can, to be sure, participate in a creation, but it can no longer be creative itself.

I'm hoping to make a new thing for the world that remains in the mind like a new species of living thing.

There was never a genius without a tincture of madness.

What is genius but the power of expressing a new individuality?

Nature is the master of talents; genius is the master of nature.

Genius creates, and taste preserves. Taste is the good sense of genius; without taste, genius is only sublime folly.

Neither a lofty degree of intelligence nor imagination nor both together go to the making of genius. Love, love, love, that is the soul of genius.

Every production of genius must be the production of enthusiasm.

If I could explain it to the average person, I wouldn't have been worth the Nobel Prize.

The only way you can get good, unless you're a genius, is to copy. That's the best thing. Just steal.

Genius is not perfected, it is deepened. It does not so much interpret the world as fertilize itself with it.

Talent does what it can; genius does what it must.

What moves those of genius, what inspires their work is not new ideas, but their obsession with the idea that what has already been said is still not enough.

It's in my stars to invent; I was born on Madame Curie's birthday. I have this need for originals, for innovation. That's why I like Charlie Parker.

Genius is more often found in a cracked pot than in a whole one.

I'm not reinventing the wheel here. I'm not Chuck Berry or Bill Monroe. Guys like that are from outer space.

Frank Ocean would be incredible; I'd love to be a sponge and absorb everything he says. Every song he puts out, I'm like, 'Why didn't I think of this?'

The first thing a genius needs is to breath free air.

Genius gives birth, talent delivers.

Genius is the capacity to see ten things where the ordinary man sees one, and the man of talent sees two or three, plus the ability to register that multiple perception in the material of his art.

The incompatibility of aquacity with the erratic originality of genius.

Too often we forget that genius, too, depends upon the data within its reach, that even Archimedes could not have devised Edison's inventions.