Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Quotes
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To measure up to all that is demanded of him, a man must overestimate his capacities.
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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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One is never deceived; one deceives oneself.
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Excellence is rarely found, more rarely valued.
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Yes, my love, who soever lives, loses, . . . but he also wins.
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Let us seek to fathom those things that are fathomable and reserve those things which are unfathomable for reverence in quietude.
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I am not omniscient, but I know a lot.
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It is the nature of grace always to fill spaces that have been empty.
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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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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.
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This is the true measure of love, When we believe that we alone can love, That no one could ever have loved so before us, And that no one will ever love in the same way after us.
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Ich bin der Geist der stets verneint.
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In all our academies we attempt far too much. ... In earlier times lectures were delivered upon chemistry and botany as branches of medicine, and the medical student learned enough of them. Now, however, chemistry and botany are become sciences of themselves, incapable of comprehension by a hasty survey, and each demanding the study of a whole life, yet we expect the medical student to understand them. He who is prudent, accordingly declines all distracting claims upon his time, and limits himself to a single branch and becomes expert in one thing.
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Generally speaking, an author's style is a faithful copy of his mind. If you would write a lucid style, let there first be light in your own mind; and if you would write a grand style, you ought to have a grand character.
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A useless life is an early death. [Ger., Ein unnutz Leben ist ein fruher Tod.]
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Wer fremde Sprachen nicht kennt, weiß nichts von seiner eigenen.
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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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People will allow their faults to be shown them; they will let themselves be punished for them; they will patiently endure many things because of them; they only become impatient when they have to lay them aside.
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You will find the most pronounced hatred of other nations on the lowest cultural levels. There is, though, a level where the hatred disappears completely and where one so to speak stands above the nations and where one experiences fortune or misfortune of a neighboring country as if they had happened to one's own.
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Man... knows only when he is satisfied and when he suffers, and only his sufferings and his satisfactions instruct him concerning himself, teach him what to seek and what to avoid. For the rest, man is a confused creature; he knows not whence he comes or whither he goes, he knows little of the world, and above all, he knows little of himself.
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What chance gathers, she easily scatters. A great person attracts great people and knows how to hold them together.
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Was glänzt, ist für den Augenblick geboren;das Echte bleibt der Nachwelt unverloren.
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What's it to you if I love you?
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We are shaped and fashioned by what we love.