Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Quotes
-
Traveling is like gambling: it is always connected with winning and losing and generally where it is least expected we receive, more or less than what we hoped for.
-
Nichts ist höher schätzen als der Werth des Tages.
-
What we agree with leaves us inactive, but contradiction makes us productive.
-
Few are open to conviction, but the majority of men are open to persuasion.
-
Rest not. Life is sweeping by; go and dare before you die. Something mighty and sublime, leave behind to conquer time.
-
A man who is ignorant of foreign languages is also ignorant of his own language.
-
I could never have known so well how paltry men are, and how little they care for really high aims, if I had not tested them by my scientific researches. Thus I saw that most men only care for science so far as they get a living by it, and that they worship even error when it affords them a subsistence.
-
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.
-
Doesn't surprise me that Christ our Lord preferred to live with whores and sinners, seeing I go in for that myself.
-
Neither art thou the man to catch the fiend and hold him!
-
Chess is the touchstone of intellect.
-
They teach in academies far too many things, and far too much that is useless.
-
Do people conform to the instructions of us old ones? Each thinks he must know best about himself, and thus many are lost entirely.
-
No skill or art is needed to grow old; the trick is to endure it.
-
Try novelties for salesman's bait, For novelty wins everyone.
-
Of the truly creative no one is ever master; it must be left to go its own way.
-
Collectors are happy people.
-
If you miss the first buttonhole, you will not succeed in buttoning up your coat.
-
The greatest act of faith takes place when a man finally decides that he is not God.
-
Where there is much light, the shadows are deepest. [Ger., Wo viel Licht is, ist starker Schatten.]
-
If a man sets out to study all the laws, he will have no time left to transgress them.
-
Writing is busy idleness.
-
A good person, striving dimly, Is well aware of the right path.
-
It is a great pleasure to transport one's-self into the spirit of the times; to see how a wise man has thought before us, and to what a glorious height we have at last carried it.