[source: Dictionary of Islam, p. 

GOETHE ON THE MAGNIFICANCE OF THE QUR'AN
However often we turn to it [the Qur'an] at first disgusting us each time 
afresh, it soon attracts, astounds, and in the end enforces our reverence...Its 
style, in accordance with its contents and aim is stern, grand, terrible - ever 
and anon truly sublime -- Thus this book will go on exercising through all ages 
a most potent influence. - Goethe
[source: Dictionary of Islam, p. 526]

QUR'AN IS SEEMINGLY DISTANT AS TO TIME AND POWERFUL, LIFTS READER INTO ASTONISHMENT
A work, then, which calls forth so powerful and seemingly incompatible emotions 
even in the distant reader - distant as to time, and still more so as mental 
development - a work which not only conquers the repugnance which he may begin 
its perusal, but changes this adverse feeling into astonishment and admiration, 
such a work must be a wonderful production of the human mind indeed and a 
problem of the highest interest to every thougthful observer of the destinies of 
mankind.
[source: Dictionary of Islam, p. 526-527]

QUR'AN CREATED A CIVILIZED NATION OUT OF SAVAGE ARABIAN TRIBES
Here, therefore, its merits as a literary production should perhaps not me 
measured by preconceived maxims of subjective and aesthetic taste, but by the 
effects which it produced in Muhammad's contemporaries and fellow countrymen. If 
it spoke so powerfully and convincingly to the hearers as to weld hitherto 
centrifugal and antagonistic elements into one compact and well organized body, 
animated by ideas far beyond  those which had until now ruled the Arabian mind, 
then its eloquence was perfect, simply because it created a civilized nation out 
of savage tribes, and shot a fresh woof into the old warp of history.
[source: Dictionary of Islam, p. 528]