Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Quotes
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The best pleasures of this world are not quite true.
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It is unpleasant to miss even the most trifling thing to which we have been accustomed.
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Water its living strength first shows, When obstacles its course oppose.
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No one is willing to believe that adults too, like children, wander about this earth in a daze and, like children, do not know where they come from or where they are going, act as rarely as they do according to genuine motives, and are as thoroughly governed as they are by biscuits and cake and the rod.
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What one has wished for in youth, in old age one has in abundance.
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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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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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Character calls forth character.
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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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If a man writes a book, let him set down only what he knows. I have guesses enough of my own.
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Hope is the second soul of the unhappy.
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How many years must a man do nothing, before he can at all know what is to be done and how to do it!
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The main thing is to have a soul that loves the truth and harbours it where he finds it. And another thing: truth requires constant repetition, because error is being preached about us all the time, and not only by isolated individuals but by the masses. In the newspapers and encyclopedias, in schools and universities, everywhere error rides high and basks in the consciousness of having the majority on its side.
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What's it to you if I love you?
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To know someone here or there with whom you can feel there is understanding in spite of distances or thoughts expressed That can make life a garden.
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Clever people are always the best conversations lexicon.
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Each indecision brings its own delays and days are lost lamenting over lost days... What you can do or think you can do, begin it. For boldness has magic, power, and genius in it.
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Seeking with the soul the land of the Greeks.
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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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Chess is the touchstone of intellect.
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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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Time flies, and what is past is done.
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Mysterious in the light of day, nature retains her veil, despite our clamours: That which she does not willingly display cannot be wrenched from her with levers, screws and hammers.