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)]