Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Quotes
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Someday someone will write a pathology of experimental physics and bring to light all those swindles which subvert our reason, beguile our judgement and, what is worse, stand in the way of any practical progress. The phenomena must be freed once and for all from their grim torture chamber of empiricism, mechanism, and dogmatism; they must be brought before the jury of man's common sense.
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Whatever necessity lays upon thee, endure; whatever she commands, do.
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Ill-humor is nothing more than an inward feeling of our own want of merit, a dissatisfaction with ourselves which is always united with an envy that foolish vanity excites.
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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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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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To make an epoch in the world, two conditions are manifestly essential-a good head and a great inheritance.
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Nichts ist höher schätzen als der Werth des Tages.
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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 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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Art is long, life short; judgment difficult, opportunity transient.
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Self-knowledge comes from knowing other men.
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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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We are so constituted that we believe the most incredible things; and, once they are engraved upon the memory, woe to him who would endeavor to erase them.
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The artist alone sees spirits. But after he has told of their appearing to him, everybody sees them.
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Superstition belongs to the essence of mankind and takes refuge, when one thinks one has suppressed it completely, in the strangest nooks and crannies; once it is safely ensconced there, it suddenly reappears.
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The experiences show us just as we are; they make us see our own defects.
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Ich bedauere die Menschen, welche von der Vergänglichkeit der Dinge viel Wesens machen und sich in Betrachtung irdischer Nichtigkeit verlieren. Sind wir ja eben deßhalb da, um das Vergängliche unvergänglich zu machen; das kann ja nur dadurch geschehen, wenn man beides zu schätzen weiß.
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A noble man is led by woman's gentle words.
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A mathematician is only perfect insofar as he is a perfect man, sensitive to the beauty of truth.
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Words are mere sound and smoke, dimming the heavenly light.
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Law is mighty, mightier necessity.
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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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The ground that a good man treads is hallowed.
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Sceptics are yet the most credulous.