Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Quotes
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Instruction does much, but encouragement everything.
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We who didn't inherit political power nor are made to acquire riches like nothing better than that which expands and solidifies the power of the spirit.
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The human mind will not be confined to any limits.
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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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Microscopes and telescopes really confuse our minds.
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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.
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Nothing is more damaging to a new truth than an old error.
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Properly speaking, such work is never finished; one must declare it so when, according to time and circumstances, one has done one's best.
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Each has his own happiness in his hands, as the artist handles the rude clay he seeks to reshape it into a figure; yet it is the same with this art as with all others: only the capacity for it is innate; the art itself must be learned and painstakingly practiced.
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A thinking man's greatest happiness is to have fathomed what can be fathomed and to revere in silence what cannot be fathomed.
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The brilliant passes, like the dew at morn; The true endures, for ages yet unborn.
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The sum which two married people owe to one another defies calculation. It is an infinite debt, which can only be discharged through all eternity.
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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.]
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The few of understanding, vision rare, Who veiled not from the herd their hearts, but tried, Poor generous fools, to lay their feelings bare, Them have men always burnt and crucified.
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The force of a language does not consist of rejecting what is foreign but of swallowing it.
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Piety is not an end but a means to attain by the greatest peace of mind the highest degree of culture.
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The true, prescriptive artist strives after artistic truth; the lawless artist, following blind instinct, after an appearance of naturalness. The one leads to the highest peaks of art, the other to its lowest depths.
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Whoever, in middle age, attempts to realize the wishes and hopes of his early youth, invariably deceives himself. Each ten years of a man's life has its own fortunes, its own hopes, its own desires.
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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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The century is advanced, but every individual begins afresh.
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Der umgang mit frauen ist das element guter sitten.
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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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All perishable is but an allegory.
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Zwey Seelen wohnen, ach! in meiner Brust.