Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Quotes
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With little wit and ease to suit them, They whirl in narrow circling trails, Like kittens playing with their tails.
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To live as one likes is plebian the noble man aspires to order and law.
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Was glänzt, ist für den Augenblick geboren;das Echte bleibt der Nachwelt unverloren.
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A useless life is an early death.
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Once a man's thirty, he's already old,He is indeed as good as dead.It's best to kill him right away.
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The century is advanced, but every individual begins afresh.
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In nature we never see anything isolated, but everything in connection with something else which is before it, beside it, under it and over it.
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The true, prescriptive artist strives after artistic truth; the lawless artist, following blind instinct, after an appearance of naturalness. The one leads to the highest peaks of art, the other to its lowest depths.
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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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A man should hear a little music, read a little poetry, and see a fine picture every day of his life, in order that worldly cares may not obliterate the sense of the beautiful which God has implanted in the human soul.
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Seeking with the soul the land of the Greeks.
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People are so constituted that everybody would rather undertake what they see others do, whether they have an aptitude for it or not.
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The artist who is not also a craftsman is no good; but, alas, most of our artists are nothing else.
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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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What's it to you if I love you?
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I am not omniscient, but I know a lot.
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A useless life is an early death. [Ger., Ein unnutz Leben ist ein fruher Tod.]
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I had rather be Mercury, the smallest among seven planets, revolving round the sun, than the first among five moons revolving round Saturn.
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What chance gathers, she easily scatters. A great person attracts great people and knows how to hold them together.
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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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Not all that is presented to us as history has really happened; and what really happened did not actually happen the way it is presented to us; moreover, what really happened is only a small part of all that happened. Everything in history remains uncertain, the largest events as well as the smallest occurrence.
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A state of true and universal tolerance is best ensured by leaving alone the peculiarities of men and peoples.
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The first and last thing required of genius is the love of truth. [Ger., Das erste und letzte, was vom Genie gefordert wird, ist Wahreits-Liebe.]
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The best pleasures of this world are not quite true.