Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe was the German poet, playwright, novelist, and scientist who is often described as the last universal man of European culture. Born in Frankfurt in 1749, he published The Sorrows of Young Werther at twenty-four, making him famous across Europe overnight and inadvertently launching a vogue for romantic melancholy. Faust, the verse drama he worked on for sixty years, is the central work of German literature. He served as a minister at the Weimar court for decades, conducted serious research in optics, botany, and anatomy, and corresponded with Napoleon, Beethoven, and Byron. His aphorisms reflect a man of extraordinary range who never stopped working: whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it; as soon as you trust yourself, you will know how to live; nothing is worth more than this day. He died in 1832 at eighty-two, still revising Faust.