Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Quotes
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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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The century is advanced, but every individual begins afresh.
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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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Das Ewig-Weibliche zieht uns hinan.
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The desire to explain what is simple by what is complex, what is easy by what is difficult, is a calamity affecting the whole body of science, known, it is true, to men of insight, but not generally admitted.
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Sceptics are yet the most credulous.
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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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I hate all explanations; they who make them deceive either themselves or the other party,-generally both.
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Art is long, life short; judgment difficult, opportunity transient.
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There are two things parents should give their children roots and wings. Roots to give them bearing and a sense of belonging, but also wings to help free them from constraints and prejudices and give them other ways to travel (or rather, to fly).
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Art is a mediator of the unspeakable.
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Few are open to conviction, but the majority of men are open to persuasion.
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Neither art thou the man to catch the fiend and hold him!
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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 effects of good music are not just because it's new; on the contrary music strikes us more the more familiar we are with it.
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Ein echter deutscher Mann mag keinen Franzen leiden,Doch ihre Weine trinkt er gern.
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A noble man is led by woman's gentle words.
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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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One lives but once in the world.
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The experiences show us just as we are; they make us see our own defects.
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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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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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Words are mere sound and smoke, dimming the heavenly light.
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Law is mighty, mightier necessity.