10 Goethe Maxims For Creative Thinkers

Goethe was a unique, prolific, and deep individual. He might be the right person for those who love to be all three.

Photo by Musa Haef on Unsplash

German poet Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s poem Courage was largely responsible for my decision to pursue an independent creative career by ignoring my engineering course and my life has never been the same:

CARELESSLY over the plain away,
Where by the boldest man no path
Cut before thee thou canst discern,
Make for thyself a path!

But it’s not just that poem. His Faust and Sorrow of Young Werther have been equally responsible for keeping me on the literature train. Its wobbliness would have otherwise meant I would have gotten out of it and looked for a comfortable house for myself a long time ago. Time and again I come back to his words and travel through them to mental and emotional places I wouldn’t have even been able to imagine had I had stuck to my country’s and the world’s mainstream culture — where Goethe doesn’t hold much significance anymore.

But he does for me and I am sure he does for all inquisitive and creative minds of the world. Minds that want to go a bit deeper and a bit wider to live life to the fullest — which isn’t…