Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832) was the dominant figure of German letters — poet, novelist, dramatist, natural scientist, and privy councillor at the court of Weimar. He worked on the Wilhelm Meister novels for most of his adult life, and in old age reshaped the second one into a loose, essayistic book studded with standalone aphorisms. This line comes from that late, restless phase: Goethe the administrator and experimentalist, impatient with knowledge that never turns into work.