Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Quotes
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All lyrical work must, as a whole, be perfectly intelligible, but in some particulars a little unintelligible.
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I am the Spirit that denies.
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Amerika, du hast es besser-als unser Kontinent, der alte.
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You accuse a woman of wavering affections, but don't blame her; she is just looking for a consistent man.
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A distracted existence leads us to no goal.
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The brilliant passes, like the dew at morn; The true endures, for ages yet unborn.
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The mark of highest originality lies in the ability to develop a familiar idea so fruitfully that it would seem no one else would ever have discovered so much to be hidden in 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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Divide and rule, a sound motto. Unite and lead, a better one.
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To make a young couple love each other, it is only necessary to oppose and separate them.
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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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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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Moral epochs have their course as well as the seasons. We can no more hold them fast than we can hold sun, moon, and stars. Our faults perpetually return upon us; and herein lies the subtlest difficulty of self-knowledge.
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Self-knowledge comes from knowing other men.
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Woman is mistress of the art of completely imbittering the life of the person on whom she depends.
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Man must strive, and striving he must err.
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The sea is flowing ever, The land retains it never.
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Our senses don't deceive us: our judgment does.
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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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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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The new vulcanism is really a daring attempt to connect the present, incomprehensible world to a past, unknown one.
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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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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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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.