Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Quotes
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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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Water its living strength first shows, When obstacles its course oppose.
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Everyone holds his fortune in his own hands, like a sculptor the raw material he will fashion into a figure. But it's the same with that type of artistic activity as with all others: We are merely born with the capability to do it. The Skill to mold the material into what we want must be learned and attentively cultivated.
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A man's foibles are what makes him lovable.
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All theory, dear friend, is gray, but the golden tree of life springs ever green.
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If a good person does you wrong, act as though you had not noticed it. If we practice and eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, soon the wholeworld will be blind and toothless.
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Sometimes I don't understand how another can love her, is allowed to love her, since I love her so completely myself, so intensely, so fully, grasp nothing, know nothing, have nothing but her!
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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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Of the truly creative no one is ever master; it must be left to go its own way.
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The useful may be trusted to further itself, for many produce it and no one can do without it; but the beautiful must be specially encouraged, for few can present it, while yet all have need of it.
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Everything in science depends on what one calls an aperch, on becoming aware of what is at the bottom of the phenomena. Such becoming aware is infinitely fertile.
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The older I get the more I trust in the law according to which the rose and the lily bloom.
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Generally speaking, an author's style is a faithful copy of his mind. If you would write a lucid style, let there first be light in your own mind; and if you would write a grand style, you ought to have a grand character.
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Seeking with the soul the land of the Greeks.
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Be always resolute with the present hour. Every moment is of infinite value.
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Beauty is a primeval phenomenon, which itself never makes its appearance, but the reflection of which is visible in a thousand different utterances of the creative mind, and is as various as nature herself.
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Time flies, and what is past is done.
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The real scholar learns how to evolve the unknown from the known, and draws near the master.
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A king there was once reigning, Who had a goodly flea, Him loved he without feigning, As his own son were he!
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We are our own devils; we drive ourselves out of our Edens.
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What's it to you if I love you?
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Great endowments often announce themselves in youth in the form of singularity and awkwardness.
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One is led astray alike by sympathy and coldness, by praise and by blame.
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We are pantheists when we study nature, polytheists when we write poetry, monotheists in our morality.