Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Quotes
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The best fortune that can fall to a man is that which corrects his defects and makes up for his failings.
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In every artist there is a touch of audacity without which no talent is conceivable.
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You must either conquer and rule or serve and lose, suffer or triumph, be the anvil or the hammer.
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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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It is only necessary to grow old to become more charitable and even indulgent. I see no fault committed by others that I have not committed myself.
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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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If you wish to advance into the infinite, explore the finite in all directions.
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And step by step, along the path of life, There's nothing true but Heaven.
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Where the light is brightest, the shadows are deepest.
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Experiments are mediators between nature and idea.
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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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Few are open to conviction, but the majority of men are open to persuasion.
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The experiences show us just as we are; they make us see our own defects.
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Smoothly and lightly the golden seed by the furrow is covered.
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There are few who have at once thought and capacity for action. Thought expands, but lames; action animates, but narrows.
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A genuine work of art usually displeases at first sight, as it suggests a deficiency in the spectator.
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We are forced to participate in the games of life before we can possibly learn how to use the options in the rules governing them.
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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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Man can only endure a certain degree of unhappiness; what is beyond that either annihilates him or passes by him and leaves him apathetic.
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With little art, clear wit and sense Suggest their own delivery.
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Where there is much light, the shadows are deepest. [Ger., Wo viel Licht is, ist starker Schatten.]
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What one has wished for in youth, in old age one has in abundance.
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What is my life if I am no longer useful to others.
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How marvelous, wide and broad is my Inheritance! Time is my property, my estate is time.