Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Quotes
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Of the truly creative no one is ever master; it must be left to go its own way.
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Begin by instructing yourself, then you will receive instruction from others.
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There is nothing in life so irrational, that good sense and chance may not set it to rights; nothing so rational, that folly and chance may not utterly confound it.
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A noble man is led by woman's gentle words.
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Es gibt kein äußeres Zeichen der Höflichkeit, das nicht einen tiefen sittlichen Grund hätte. Die rechte Erziehung wäre, welche dieses Zeichen und den Grund zugleich überlieferte.
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One lives but once in the world.
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Art is long, life short; judgment difficult, opportunity transient.
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The artist alone sees spirits. But after he has told of their appearing to him, everybody sees them.
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Divide and rule, the politician cries; unite and lead, is watchword of the wise.
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Water its living strength first shows, When obstacles its course oppose.
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Excellence is rarely found, more rarely valued.
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The ground that a good man treads is hallowed.
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God made man simple, but how he changed and got complicated is hard to say.
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I can promise to be sincere, but I cannot promise to be impartial.
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No one is willing to believe that adults too, like children, wander about this earth in a daze and, like children, do not know where they come from or where they are going, act as rarely as they do according to genuine motives, and are as thoroughly governed as they are by biscuits and cake and the rod.
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Der Irrthum verhält sich gegen das Wahre wie der Schlaf gegen das Wachen. Ich habe bemerkt, daß man aus dem Irren sich wie erquickt wieder zu dem Wahren hinwende.
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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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Es ist so gewiß als wunderbar, daß Wahrheit und Irrthum aus Einer Quelle entstehen; deßwegen man oft dem Irrthum nicht schaden darf, weil man zugleich der Wahrheit schadet.
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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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A mathematician is only perfect insofar as he is a perfect man, sensitive to the beauty of truth.
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He who moves not forward, goes backward.
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I do not know myself, and God forbid that I should.
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How marvelous, wide and broad is my Inheritance! Time is my property, my estate is time.
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The artist who is not also a craftsman is no good; but, alas, most of our artists are nothing else.