Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Quotes
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One is never satisfied with a portrait of a person that one knows.
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Law is mighty, mightier necessity.
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Mountains cannot be surmounted except by winding paths.
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There's nothing clever that hasn't been thought of before - you've just got to try to think it all over again.
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Superstition is the poesy of practical life; hence, a poet is none the worse for being superstitious.
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O'er all the hilltopsIs quiet now,In all the treetopsHearest thouHardly a breath;The birds are asleep in the trees:Wait; soon like theseThou too shalt rest.
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Even the lowliest, provided he is whole, can be happy, and in his own way, perfect.
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Ein unnütz Leben ist ein früher Tod...
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I'm gazing at church and palace, ruin and column,Like a serious man making sensible use of a journey,But soon it will happen, and all will be one vast temple,Love's temple, receiving its new initiate.Though you're a whole world, Rome, still, without Love,The world isn't the world, and Rome can't be Rome.
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Young Schopenhauer, a zealous and thorough-going Kantian, tried to explain that light would cease to exist along with the seeing eye. 'What!' he said, according to Schopenhauer's own report, 'looking at him with his Jove-like eyes,'-'You should rather say that you would not exist if the light could not see you?'
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The desire to explain what is simple by what is complex, what is easy by what is difficult, is a calamity affecting the whole body of science, known, it is true, to men of insight, but not generally admitted.
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People do not mind their faults being spread out before them, but they become impatient if called on to give them up.
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Individuality of expression is the beginning and end of all art.
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Keep not standing fixed and rooted. Briskly venture, briskly roam.
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Once a man's thirty, he's already old,He is indeed as good as dead.It's best to kill him right away.
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My son, whoever wishes to keep a secret, must hide from us that he possesses one. Self complaisance over the concealed destroys its concealment.
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Die Wahrheit widerspricht unserer Natur, der Irrthum nicht, und zwar aus einem sehr einfachen Grunde: die Wahrheit fordert, daß wir uns für beschränkt erkennen follen, der Irrthum schmeichelt uns. wir seien auf ein- oder die andere Weise unbegränzt.
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Man supposes that he directs his life and governs his actions, when his existence is irretrievably under the control of destiny.
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Yes, I have finally arrived to this Capital of the World! I now see all the dreams of my youth coming to life... Only in Rome is it possible to understand Rome.
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Do not hurry; do not rest.
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The bad thing is that thinking about thought doesn't help at all; one has to have it from nature so that the good ideas appear before us like free children of God calling to us: Here we are.
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Ich bedauere die Menschen, welche von der Vergänglichkeit der Dinge viel Wesens machen und sich in Betrachtung irdischer Nichtigkeit verlieren. Sind wir ja eben deßhalb da, um das Vergängliche unvergänglich zu machen; das kann ja nur dadurch geschehen, wenn man beides zu schätzen weiß.
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We all walk in mysteries. We are surrounded by an atmosphere about which we still know nothing at all.
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A violet on the meadow grew, That no one saw, that no one knew, It was a modest flower. A shepherdess pass'd by that way. Light footed, pretty and so gay; That way she came, Softly warbling forth her lay.