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As all Nature's thousand changes
But one changeless God proclaim;
So in Art's wide kingdom ranges
One sole meaning still the same:
This is Truth, eternal Reason,
Which from Beauty takes its dress,
And serene through time and season
Stands for aye in loveliness.

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

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Source: Wilhelm Meister's Travels, Chapter XIV (Chapter III, 128 of Carlyle's Ed.). In Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 43-45.
Source quality: Precise citation Points to a specific work with a page, chapter, date or similar locator, so you can look it up.

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The deed is everything, the glory naught.

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Topics

Art

More quotes by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

A mathematician is only perfect insofar as he is a perfect man, sensitive to the beauty of truth.

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None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free.

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I had rather be Mercury, the smallest among seven [planets], revolving round the sun, than the first among five [moons] revolving round Saturn.

Of freedom and of life he only is deserving
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Properly speaking, such work is never finished; one must declare it so when, according to time and circumstances, one has done one's best.

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Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.