Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Quotes
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It is the nature of grace always to fill spaces that have been empty.
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Good children's literature appeals not only to the child in the adult, but to the adult in the child.
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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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Here too it’s masquerade, I find: As everywhere, the dance of mind. I grasped a lovely masked procession, And caught things from a horror show… I’d gladly settle for a false impression, If it would last a little longer, though.
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Writing is busy idleness.
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Where there is much light, the shadows are deepest. [Ger., Wo viel Licht is, ist starker Schatten.]
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Der thörigste von allen Irrthümern ist, wenn junge gute Köpfe glauben, ihre Originalität zu verlieren, indem sie das Wahre anerkennen, was von andern schon anerkannt worden.
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Care is taken that trees do not grow into the sky.
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As our inclinations, so our opinions.
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Investigate what is, and not what pleases.
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To have seen Italy without having seen Sicily is to not have seen Italy at all, for Sicily is the clue to everything.
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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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A vain man can never be utterly ruthless: he wants to win applause and therefore he accommodates himself to others.
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Das Klassische nenne ich das Gesunde und das Romantische das Kranke.
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There are only two lasting bequests we can hope to give our children. One of these is roots, the other, wings.
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It is in human nature to relax, when not compelled by personal advantage or disadvantage.
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Great passions are incurable diseases.
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Bin ich ein Gott? Mir wird so licht!
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You must either conquer and rule or serve and lose, suffer or triumph, be the anvil or the hammer.
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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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We are pantheists as natural scientists, polytheists as poets, and monotheists as moral beings.
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Look closely at those who patronize you. Half are unfeeling, half untaught.
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I curse all negative purism that tells me not to use a word from another language that either expresses something that my own language cannot or does that in a more delicate manner.
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It matters little whether a man be mathematically or philologically or artistically cultivated, so he be but cultivated.