Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Quotes
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To make an epoch in the world, two conditions are manifestly essential-a good head and a great inheritance.
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I hate all explanations; they who make them deceive either themselves or the other party,-generally both.
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For just when ideas fail, a word comes in to save the situation.
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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.
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Divide and rule, the politician cries; unite and lead, is watchword of the wise.
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The poet should seize the Particular, and he should, if there be anything sound in it, thus represent the Universal.
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Individuality of expression is the beginning and end of all art.
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Self-knowledge comes from knowing other men.
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Das Ewig-Weibliche zieht uns hinan.
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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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Whatever liberates our spirit, without also giving us mastery over ourselves, is destructive.
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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.
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Love and desire are the spirit's wings to great deeds.
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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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In der Kunst ist das Beste gut genug.
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The child, offered the mother's breast, Will not in the beginning grab it; But soon it clings to it with zest. And thus at wisdom's copious breasts You'll drink each day with greater zest.
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Viewed from the summit of reason, all life looks like a malignant disease and the world like a madhouse.
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One lives but once in the world.
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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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A man's name is not like a mantle which merely hangs about him...but a perfectly fitting garment, which, like the skin, has grown over him, at which one cannot rake and scrape without injuring the man himself.
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I can promise to be sincere, but I cannot promise to be impartial.
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The mind is found most acute and most uneasy in the morning. Uneasiness is, indeed, a species of sagacity - a passive sagacity. Fools are never uneasy.
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We must not take the faults of our youth with us into old age, for age brings along its own defects.
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The greatest genius will not be worth much if he pretends to draw exclusively from his own resources.