Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Quotes
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In every artist there is a touch of audacity without which no talent is conceivable.
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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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You must either conquer and rule or serve and lose, suffer or triumph, be the anvil or the hammer.
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One is led astray alike by sympathy and coldness, by praise and by blame.
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The decline in literature indicates a decline in the nation. The two keep pace in their downward tendency.
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So then the year is repeating its old story again. We are come once more, thank God! to its most charming chapter. The violets and the Mayflowers are as its inscriptions or vignettes. It always makes a pleasant impression on us, when we open again at these pages of the book of life.
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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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Divide and rule, a sound motto. Unite and lead, a better one.
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Here too it’s masquerade, I find: As everywhere, the dance of mind. I grasped a lovely masked procession, And caught things from a horror show… I’d gladly settle for a false impression, If it would last a little longer, though.
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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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Great passions are incurable diseases.
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But when all is said, the greatest art is to limit and isolate oneself.
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Correction does much, but encouragement does more. Encouragement after censure is as the sun after a shower.
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Ich bin der Geist der stets verneint.
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The intelligent man finds almost everything ridiculous, the sensible man hardly anything.
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New inventions can and will be made; however, nothing new can be thought of that concerns moral man. Everything has already been thought and said which at best we can express in different forms and give new expressions to.
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Amerika, du hast es besser-als unser Kontinent, der alte.
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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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We are pantheists when we study nature, polytheists when we write poetry, monotheists in our morality.
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Whatever necessity lays upon thee, endure; whatever she commands, do.
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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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It is in human nature to relax, when not compelled by personal advantage or disadvantage.
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It matters little whether a man be mathematically or philologically or artistically cultivated, so he be but cultivated.
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Good children's literature appeals not only to the child in the adult, but to the adult in the child.