Throughout his long hectic & astonishingly varied life Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832) would jot down his passing thoughts on theatre programmes visiting cards draft manuscripts & even bills Goethe was probably the last true Renaissance Man' Although employed as a Privy Councillor at the Duke of Weimar's court where he helped oversee major mining road-building & irrigation projects he also painted directed plays carried out research in anatomy botany & optics
- & still found time to produce masterpieces in every literary genre His fourteen hundred Maxims & Reflections reveal some of his deepest thought on art ethics literature & natural science but also his immediate reactions to books chance encounters or his administrative work Although variable in quality the vast majority have a freshness & immediacy which vividly conjure up Goethe the man They make an ideal introduction to one of the greatest of European writers