Famous Quotes | Everything ponderous, viscous,...

Everything ponderous, viscous, and solemnly clumsy, all long- winded and boring types of style are developed in profuse variety among Germans—forgive me the fact that even Goethe’s prose, in its mixture of stiffness and elegance, is no exception, being a reflection of the “good old time” to which it belongs, and a reflection of German taste at a time when there still was a “German taste”Ma rococo taste in moribus et artibus. - Friedrich Nietzsche
Attribution: Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900), German philosopher, classical scholar, critic of culture. Friedrich Nietzsche, Sämtliche Werke: Kritische Studienausgabe, vol. 5, p. 46, eds. Giorgio Colli and Mazzino Montinari, Berlin, de Gruyter (1980); Beyond Good and Evil, p. 40, trans. by Walter Kaufmann, New York, Vintage Books (1966). Beyond Good and Evil, “Second Part: The Free Spirit,” section 28 (1886). “How much dreary heaviness, lameness, dampness, sloppiness, how much beer there is in the German intellect!” (Twilight of the Idols, “What the Germans Lack,” aph. 2, 1889).

Categories: Classical Scholar, Critic Of Culture, Germany And The Germans, Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von, Philosopher, Style

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