Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Quotes
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To live as one likes is plebian the noble man aspires to order and law.
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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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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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Smoothly and lightly the golden seed by the furrow is covered.
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Piety, like nobility, has its aristocracy.
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We are pantheists when we study nature, polytheists when we write poetry, monotheists in our morality.
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Fools and wise men are equally harmless. It is the half-fools and half-wise that are dangerous.
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We are our own devils; we drive ourselves out of our Edens.
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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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Who is the wisest man? He who neither knows or wishes for anything else than what happens.
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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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Was glänzt, ist für den Augenblick geboren;das Echte bleibt der Nachwelt unverloren.
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God made man simple, but how he changed and got complicated is hard to say.
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Water its living strength first shows, When obstacles its course oppose.
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One is led astray alike by sympathy and coldness, by praise and by blame.
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A judge who cannot punish, in the end associates themselves with the criminal.
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The best pleasures of this world are not quite true.
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A man's foibles are what makes him lovable.
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Try novelties for salesman's bait, For novelty wins everyone.
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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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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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All theory, dear friend, is gray, but the golden tree of life springs ever green.
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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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Look closely at those who patronize you. Half are unfeeling, half untaught.