John Anster

1793–1867 · Irish poet & Regius Professor of Civil Law, Trinity College Dublin

John Anster was an Irish poet, lawyer, and academic who produced the first British translation of part of Goethe’s Faust into English (1835). Working in what critics called a ‘very free’ style, Anster often paraphrased rather than translated literally — and it was one such inventive paraphrase, the “Boldness has genius” couplet, that outlived his name and became the world’s most famous ‘Goethe’ quote he never wrote.

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“Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it”

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