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The German Genius: Europe's Third Renaissance, the Second Scientific Revolution, and the Twentieth Century QUOTES

The German Genius: Europe's Third Renaissance, the Second Scientific Revolution, and the Twentieth Century QUOTES

1 " The Sanskrit language, whatever be its antiquity, is of a wonderful structure; more perfect than the Greek, more copious than the Latin, and more exquisitely refined than either, yet bearing to both of them a stronger affinity, both in the roots of the verbs and in the forms of the grammar, than could possibly have been produced by accident; so strong, indeed, that no philologer could examine them all three, without believing them to have sprung from some common source, which, perhaps, no longer exists. "

― Peter Watson , The German Genius: Europe's Third Renaissance, the Second Scientific Revolution, and the Twentieth Century

2 " From 1781, by which time Goethe had been in Weimer for six years, he confided to Charlotte that he no longer felt able to address her as "Sie," and must use the more intimate "du." This brought about a sea change. As one critic put it, Goethe's letters now became "prose poems of happy love with few parallels in any literature. "

― Peter Watson , The German Genius: Europe's Third Renaissance, the Second Scientific Revolution, and the Twentieth Century

3 " Even by the end of the seventeenth century, fifty years before our starting point, there was no shortage of people in Europe who felt that the Christian religion had been gravely discredited. Protestants and Catholics had been killing each other in the hundreds of thousands, or millions, for holding opinions that no one could prove one way or the other. The observations of Kepler and Galileo transformed man’s view of the heavens, and the flood of discoveries from the New World promoted an interest in the diversity of customs and beliefs found on the other side of the Atlantic. It was obvious to many that God favored diversity over uniformity and that Christianity and Christian concepts—like the soul and a concentration on the afterlife—were not necessarily crucial elements since so many lived without them. "

― Peter Watson , The German Genius: Europe's Third Renaissance, the Second Scientific Revolution, and the Twentieth Century

4 " In some ways this was Goethe’s greatest achievement: the search for the serial relationships in nature, emphasizing border experiences, the junctures where “the real joints of nature” are located, is most likely to reveal the process of change, development, organizing principles. This is also why it needed individuals who were both poet and scientist, who could combine “imagination, observation and thought in the act of language. "

― Peter Watson , The German Genius: Europe's Third Renaissance, the Second Scientific Revolution, and the Twentieth Century

5 " has profoundly modified the whole trend of modern civilisation, imposing her thought, her standards, her literary forms, her imagery, her visions and dreams wherever she is known. But Germany is the supreme example of her triumphant spiritual tyranny. The Germans have imitated the Greeks more slavishly: they have been obsessed by them more utterly… "

― Peter Watson , The German Genius: Europe's Third Renaissance, the Second Scientific Revolution, and the Twentieth Century

6 " The final new elements in music making (as opposed to listening, considered in the next section) were introduced by Carl Maria von Weber (1786–1826). Weber had a diseased hip and walked with a limp but he was a virtuoso of the guitar and an excellent singer, until he damaged his voice by accidentally drinking a glass of nitric acid. "

― Peter Watson , The German Genius: Europe's Third Renaissance, the Second Scientific Revolution, and the Twentieth Century

7 " ...returning to Russia, where he met his first wife, Ekaterina. She thought Heinrich [Schliemann] was richer than he was, and when she discovered her mistake, she withheld conjugal rights. This had the desired effect, and he cornered the market in indigo, to such effect that Ekaterina bore him three children. "

― Peter Watson , The German Genius: Europe's Third Renaissance, the Second Scientific Revolution, and the Twentieth Century