If you have a great work in your head, nothing else thrives near it; all other thoughts are repelled, and the pleasure of life itself is for the time lost.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832) German poet, statesman, scientist

Comment (18 Feb 1831)

In P. Eckermann, Conversations with Goethe, 1836-1848 [tr. J. Oxenford (1850)]