Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Quotes
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Only mankind Can do the impossible: He can distinguish, He chooses and judges, He can give permanence To the moment.
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There is nothing in the world more shameful than establishing one's self on lies and fables.
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An angel! Nonsense! Everybody so describes his mistress; and yet I find it impossible to tell you how perfect she is, or why she is so perfect: suffice it to say she has captivated all my senses.
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I consider him of no account who esteems himself just as the popular breath may chance to raise him.
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As beauteous is the world, and many a joy Floats through its wide dominion. But, alas, When we would seize the winged good, it flies.
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How marvelous, wide and broad is my Inheritance! Time is my property, my estate is time.
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Who strives always to the utmost, him can we save.
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I curse all negative purism that tells me not to use a word from another language that either expresses something that my own language cannot or does that in a more delicate manner.
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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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As soon as you trust yourself, you will know how to live.
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Love and desire are the spirit's wings to great deeds.
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A man who is ignorant of foreign languages is also ignorant of his own language.
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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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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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To live as one likes is plebian the noble man aspires to order and law.
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Neither art thou the man to catch the fiend and hold him!
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Where the light is brightest, the shadows are deepest.
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Viewed from the summit of reason, all life looks like a malignant disease and the world like a madhouse.
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Who is the wisest man? He who neither knows or wishes for anything else than what happens.
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Was glänzt, ist für den Augenblick geboren;das Echte bleibt der Nachwelt unverloren.
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It is always a sign of an unproductive time when it concerns itself with petty and technical aspects [in philology], and likewiseit is a sign of an unproductive person to pursue such trifles.
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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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Smoothly and lightly the golden seed by the furrow is covered.
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Fools and wise men are equally harmless. It is the half-fools and half-wise that are dangerous.