Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Quotes
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Self-knowledge comes from knowing other men.
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He who only tastes his error will long dwell with it, will take delight in it as in a singular felicity; while he who drains it to the dregs will, if he be not crazy, find it to be what it is.
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All theory, dear friend, is gray, but the golden tree of life springs ever green.
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The poet should seize the Particular, and he should, if there be anything sound in it, thus represent the Universal.
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Talk well of the absent whenever you have the opportunity.
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We are pantheists as natural scientists, polytheists as poets, and monotheists as moral beings.
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This is why we may say that those who parade piety as a purpose and an aim mostly turn into hypocrites
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The person of analytic or critical intellect finds something ridiculous in everything. The person of synthetic or constructive intellect, in almost nothing.
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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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A man who is ignorant of foreign languages is also ignorant of his own language.
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With little art, clear wit and sense Suggest their own delivery.
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Ignorant men raise questions that wise men answered a thousand years ago.
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Good children's literature appeals not only to the child in the adult, but to the adult in the child.
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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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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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A noble man is led by woman's gentle words.
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Divide and rule, a sound motto. Unite and lead, a better one.
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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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The older I get the more I trust in the law according to which the rose and the lily bloom.
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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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Why should we not recognize in the lightning, the thunder, and the storm wind, the approach of an overwhelming Power, and in the scent of flowers and the gently rustling zephyr the presence of a Being full of love?
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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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The mind is found most acute and most uneasy in the morning. Uneasiness is, indeed, a species of sagacity - a passive sagacity. Fools are never uneasy.
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One is led astray alike by sympathy and coldness, by praise and by blame.