Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Quotes
-
Great endowments often announce themselves in youth in the form of singularity and awkwardness.
-
There is nothing new on earth For a person who lives long and experiences much. In my years of youthful wandering I have seen crystallized people.
-
Do not, I beg you, look for anything behind phenomena. They are themselves their own lesson.
-
The dangers of life are infinite, and among them is safety.
-
Doubt can only be removed by action.
-
How to please the public - that's the test, But nowadays I find I'm in a fix; I know they're not accustomed to the best, But they've all read so much they know the tricks. How can we give then something fresh and new That's serious, but entertaining too?
-
Yes, my love, who soever lives, loses, . . . but he also wins.
-
No man learns to know his inmost nature by introspection, for he rates himself sometimes too low, and often too high, by his own measurement. Man knows himself only by comparing himself with other men; it is life that touches his genuine worth.
-
Mozart is a human incarnation of the divine force of creation.
-
There is no outward sign of true courtesy that does not rest on a deep moral foundation.
-
By the artist's seizing any one object from nature, that object no longer is part of nature. One can go so far as to say that theartist creates the object in that very moment by emphasizing its significant, characteristic, and interesting aspects or, rather, by adding the higher values.
-
Microscopes and telescopes really confuse our minds.
-
It used to happen, and still happens, to me to take no pleasure in a work of art at the first sight of it, because it is too much for me; but if I suspect any merit in it, I try to get at it; and then I never fail to make the most gratifying discoveries--to find new qualities in the work itself and new faculties in myself.
-
He who is firm in will molds the world to himself. [Ger., Aber wer fest auf dem Sinne beharrt, der bildet die Welt sich.]
-
The first and last thing required of genius is the love of truth. [Ger., Das erste und letzte, was vom Genie gefordert wird, ist Wahreits-Liebe.]
-
Nature! We live in her midst and know her not. She is incessantly speaking to us, but betrays not her secret. We constantly act upon her, and yet have no power over her. Variant: NATURE! We are surrounded and embraced by her: powerless to separate ourselves from her, and powerless to penetrate beyond her.
-
Die Kunst an und für sich selbst ist edel; deßhalb fürchtet sich der Künstler nicht vor dem Gemeinen. Ja indem er es aufnimmt, ist es schon geadelt, und so sehen wir die größten Künstler mit Kühnheit ihr Majestätsrecht ausüben.
-
Belief is not the beginning of knowledge - it is the end.
-
Let us seek to fathom those things that are fathomable and reserve those things which are unfathomable for reverence in quietude.
-
One says a lot in vain, refusing;The other mainly hears the 'No.'
-
The art of governing is a great metier, requiring the whole man, and it is therefore not well for a ruler to have too strong tendencies for other affairs.
-
I curse all negative purism that tells me not to use a word from another language that either expresses something that my own language cannot or does that in a more delicate manner.
-
The most congenial social occasions are those ruled by cheerful deference of each for all.
-
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.