Goethe - Short Biography, Works, Personal Life and Best Quotes

Goethe was a German poet, writer and  scientist, one of the key figures of European culture.  Besides he was one of the most highly gifted and variously accomplished men of the 18th century. Goethe’s works span the fields of poetry, drama, literature, theology, philosophy and science. 
Literature. His earliest lyric poems, set to music, were published yet in 1769. But he first gained literary fame with the 1773 play Götz von Berlichingen,  a pure product of Sturm und Drang  and  especially the 1774 novel Die Leiden des Jungen Werthers (The Sorrows of Young Werther), which Goethe, on the verge of suicide, wrote after his unrequited love for Charlotte Buff. Werther gave him immediate fame and was widely translated.
Initially Goethe stressed the role of passion in art, but after visiting Italy (1786-88) he had a greater appreciation of the classical tradition and ideal. Under the classical impact some works were written: the final, poetic version of the drama Iphigenie auf Tauris (1787),  the historical drama Egmont (1788), well known for Beethoven's incidental music; Römische Elegien (1788); the psychological drama Torquato Tasso (1789); the domestic epic Hermann und Dorothea (1797).
The novel Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre (The apprenticeship of Wilhelm Meister) (1796), became the prototype of the German Bildungsroman, or novel of character development. His novel Die Wahlverwandtschaften (1809,  Elective Affinities) is one of his most significant novels, but perhaps his best-known work in that genre is the Wilhelm Meister series. In 1829 the last installment of Wilhelm Meisters Wanderjahre (Wilhelm Meister's journeyman years), a series of episodes, was published. His most enduring work and  magnum opus, indeed, one of the peaks of world literature, is the two-part dramatic poem Faust. He began work on this masterpiece in 1775 year. The first part was published in 1808, the second shortly after his death.
His other works include an autobiography, Dichtung und Wahrheit (Poetry and Truth, 1811-33), and his travel account in Winckelmann und sein Jahrhundert ( Winckelmann and his century) (1805) and Die italienische Reise (1816).
Music. An accomplished amateur musician, Goethe conducted instrumental and vocal ensembles and directed opera performances in Weimar. Many of his operetta librettos were composed, none achieved lasting fame. Goethe's exquisite lyrical poems, often inspired by existing songs.
Science. His approach to science was one of sensuous experience and poetic intuition. He tried not only to explain the nature, but rather to persive “the pulse of life”, to grasp the universal laws  in the flow of commonplace events. He was the  author of the scientific Theory of Colours (1810), in which he purported to refute the Optics of Newton. In his essays on botany Metamorphosis of Plants (1790) and he advanced  some influential ideas on plant and animal morphology and homology, which were extended and developed by 19th century naturalists including Charles Darwin. 
Philosophy: Goethe himself expressly and decidedly refrained from practicing philosophy in the specialized sense. His Worldview most clearly presented in his poetic works: Faust,  West-Eastern Divan,  'Eins und Alles' ("One and All"), "The soul of the world" and also in his conversations, reflections and maxims. For Goethe God and Nature were one. He stated the pantheist formula “One and All”, “Nothing's inside, nothing's outside. For the inside is the outside”, “If God's own power lay not inside us, how could divinity delight us?”, “Each one sees what he carries in his heart”,