Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Quotes
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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 century is advanced, but every individual begins afresh.
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A man can be himself only so long as he is alone; and if he does not love solitude, he will not love freedom; for it is only when he is alone that he is really free.
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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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The society of women is the element of good manners.
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Das Ewig-Weibliche zieht uns hinan.
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It is delivery that makes the orators success.
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Whatever necessity lays upon thee, endure; whatever she commands, do.
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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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Look at a man the way he is and he only becomes worse, but look at him as if he were what he could be, then he becomes what he should be.
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Words are mere sound and smoke, dimming the heavenly light.
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A man who is ignorant of foreign languages is also ignorant of his own language.
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Ein echter deutscher Mann mag keinen Franzen leiden,Doch ihre Weine trinkt er gern.
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The shudder of awe is humanity's highest faculty, Even though this world is forever altering its values.
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All perishable is but an allegory.
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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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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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Nothing is more dangerous than solitude.
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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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Instruction does much, but encouragement everything.
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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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Few are open to conviction, but the majority of men are open to persuasion.
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Love and desire are the spirit's wings to great deeds.
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I consider him of no account who esteems himself just as the popular breath may chance to raise him.