The ever-changing display of plant forms, which I have followed for so many years, awakens increasingly within me the notion: The plant forms which surround us were not all created at some given point in time and then locked into the given form, they have been given... a felicitous mobility and plasticity that allows them to grow and adapt themselves to many different conditions in many different places. ...How they can be brought together under one concept has slowly become clear to me and that this conception can be enlivened at a higher level [of consciousness]: thus I began to recognize, in the sense perceptible form, a supersensible archetype. Whoever has felt what a rich, saturated thought... has to say, will admit what a passionate movement comes to life in the spirit when we are enthused, and we anticipate the totality of what will evolve step by step..."

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Attributed Goethe's Story of My Botanical Studies (1831)

Source and credibility

Wikiquote lists this as attributed to Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, but no primary source has been found.

Source: Goethe's Story of My Botanical Studies (1831) attributed by Frank Teichmann (tr. Jon McAlice) "The Emergence of the Idea of Evolution in the Time of Goethe"
Work: Goethe's Story of My Botanical Studies, 1831
Source quality: Source identified Names the work or year, but without an exact location.