A Quote For Saturday, From Goethe
“Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, magic, and power in it. Begin it now.” — Goethe.
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I think this is so cool, I thought I’d share it with you again today—just in case you missed it in Monday’s post!
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Hi Magdalene,Thank you so much for that elucidation--it's an absolutely fascinating story and now I shall have to do a corrective blog post re the "Goethe" :)
This is one of my all time favorite quotes too. I became very interested in it a couple of years ago and discovered that it is not really a true Goethe quote. Or rather it is Goethe as re-imagined by Scottish writer and mountaineer W. H. Murray. I quite like the whole passage and thought that you might enjoy it too. Here is an excerpt from the Wiki page:
A quotation by Murray is widely misattributed to Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.[2] The following passage occurs near the beginning of Murray's The Scottish Himalayan Expedition (1951):
... but when I said that nothing had been done I erred in one important matter. We had definitely committed ourselves and were halfway out of our ruts. We had put down our passage money— booked a sailing to Bombay. This may sound too simple, but is great in consequence. Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back, always ineffectiveness. Concerning all acts of initiative (and creation), there is one elementary truth, the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then Providence moves too. All sorts of things occur to help one that would never otherwise have occurred. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one's favour all manner of unforeseen incidents and meetings and material assistance, which no man could have dreamt would have come his way. I learned a deep respect for one of Goethe's couplets:
Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it.
Boldness has genius, power and magic in it!
The "Goethe couplet" referred to here is from an extremely loose translation of Goethe's Faust lines 214-30 made by John Anster in 1835.[3]
Cheers,
Magdalene