That the life of man is but a dream, many a man has surmised heretofore; and I, too, am everywhere pursued by this feeling. When I consider the narrow limits within which our active and inquiring faculties are confined; when I see how all our energies are wasted in providing for mere necessities, which again have no further end than to prolong a wretched existence; and then that all our satisfaction concerning certain subjects of investigation ends in nothing better than a passive resignation, whilst we amuse ourselves painting our prison-walls with bright figures and brilliant landscapes, — when I consider all this, Wilhelm, I am silent. I examine my own being, and find there a world, but a world rather of imagination and dim desires, than of distinctness and living power. Then everything swims before my senses, and I smile and dream while pursuing my way through the world.

His conversations and various common undertakings throughout the 1790s with Schiller Johann Gottlieb Fichte Johann Gottfried Herder Alexander von Humboldt Wilhelm von Humboldt and August and Friedrich Schlegel have in later years been collectively termed Weimar Classicism. After returning from a tour of Italy in 1788 Goethe publiJohann Wolfgang von Goethed his first major work of a scientific nature the Metamorphosis of Plants. He was an early participant in the Sturm und Drang literary movement named for a play by his childhood friend Friedrich Maximilian Klinger.

Goethe's poems were set to music throughout the nineteenth century by a number of composers including Ludwig van Beethoven Franz Schubert Robert Schumann Johannes Brahms Hugo Wolf and Gustav Mahler. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (German: [ˈjoːhan ˈvɔlfɡaŋ fɔn ˈɡøːtə] ([Image] listen) 28 August 1749 – 22 March 1832) was a German writer artist and politician.