Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Quotes
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Woe to him who would ascribe something like reason to Chance, and make a religion of surrendering to it.
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Oh happy he who still can hope in our day to breathe the truth while plunged in seas of error! What we don't know is really what we need, and what we know is of no use to us whatever!
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Don't give us your doubts, gives us your certainties, for we have doubts enough of our own.
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The rabble also vent their rage in words.
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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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Hatred is active displeasure, envy passive. We need not wonder that envy turns to soon to hatred.
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There are few who have at once thought and capacity for action. Thought expands, but lames; action animates, but narrows.
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If you miss the first buttonhole, you will not succeed in buttoning up your coat.
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Writing is busy idleness.
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Hope is the second soul of the unhappy.
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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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No prudent antagonist thinks light of his adversaries.
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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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Man can only endure a certain degree of unhappiness; what is beyond that either annihilates him or passes by him and leaves him apathetic.
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Wishes are premonitions of abilities.
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Care is taken that trees do not grow into the sky.
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Try novelties for salesman's bait, For novelty wins everyone.
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It is unpleasant to miss even the most trifling thing to which we have been accustomed.
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In all times it is only individuals that have advanced science, not the age.
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I never knew how to worship until I knew how to love.
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All poetry is supposed to be instructive but in an unnoticeable manner; it is supposed to make us aware of what it would be valuable to instruct ourselves in; we must deduce the lesson on our own, just as with life.
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What right those who govern have to govern they don't question, they just govern. Whether the people have a right to depose them that doesn't concern them. All they are concerned with is that the people will not be tempted to depose them.
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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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Investigate what is, and not what pleases.