Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Quotes
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One errs as long as one strives.
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We are pantheists as natural scientists, polytheists as poets, and monotheists as moral beings.
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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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A man's foibles are what makes him lovable.
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He who moves not forward, goes backward.
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There is no surer method of evading the world than by following Art, and no surer method of linking oneself to it than by Art.
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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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Of the truly creative no one is ever master; it must be left to go its own way.
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If a good person does you wrong, act as though you had not noticed it. If we practice and eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, soon the wholeworld will be blind and toothless.
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The beautiful is a phenomenon which is never apparent of itself, but is reflected in a thousand different works of the creator.
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Do people conform to the instructions of us old ones? Each thinks he must know best about himself, and thus many are lost entirely.
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No skill or art is needed to grow old; the trick is to endure it.
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He who wishes to exert a useful influence must be careful to insult nothing. Let him not be troubled by what seems absurd, but concentrate his energies to the creation of what is good. He must not demolish, but build. He must raise temples where mankind may come and partake of the purest pleasure.
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That which is eternal in Woman lifts us above.
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If you miss the first buttonhole, you will not succeed in buttoning up your coat.
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Faith is like private capital, stored in one's own house. It is like a public savings bank or loan office, from which individuals receive assistance in their days of need; but here the creditor quietly takes his interest for himself.
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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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Hatred is active displeasure, envy passive. We need not wonder that envy turns to soon to hatred.
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Confronted by outstanding merit, there is no way of saving one's ego except by love.
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Everything is both simpler than we can imagine and more entangled than we can conceive.
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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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No prudent antagonist thinks light of his adversaries.
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The person who in shaky times also wavers only increases the evil, but the person of firm decision fashions the universe.
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Mathematicians are like Frenchmen: whatever you say to them they translate into their own language and forthwith it is something entirely different.