When a nation which has long groaned under the intolerable yoke of a tyrant rises at last and throws off its chains, do you call that weakness? The man who, to rescue his house from the flames, finds his physical strength redoubled, so that he lifts burdens with ease which in the absence of excitement he could scarcely move; he who under the rage of an insult attacks and puts to flight half a score of his enemies,—are such persons to be called weak? My good friend, if resistance be strength, how can the highest degree of resistance be a weakness?

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.