Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Quotes
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A useless life is an early death.
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What chance gathers, she easily scatters. A great person attracts great people and knows how to hold them together.
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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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Wishes are premonitions of abilities.
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And step by step, along the path of life, There's nothing true but Heaven.
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Ill-humor is nothing more than an inward feeling of our own want of merit, a dissatisfaction with ourselves which is always united with an envy that foolish vanity excites.
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A man should hear a little music, read a little poetry, and see a fine picture every day of his life, in order that worldly cares may not obliterate the sense of the beautiful which God has implanted in the human soul.
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This is why we may say that those who parade piety as a purpose and an aim mostly turn into hypocrites
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Never by reflection, but only by doing is self- knowledge possible to one.
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Collectors are happy people.
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A state of true and universal tolerance is best ensured by leaving alone the peculiarities of men and peoples.
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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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There are people who pay attention to the weaknesses of their friends; that is to no avail. I have always closely watched and profited from the strengths of my adversaries.
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Wer fremde Sprachen nicht kennt, weiss nichts von seiner eigenen.He who is ignorant of foreign languages, knows not his own.
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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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Every form correctly seen is beautiful.
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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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Hatred is active displeasure, envy passive. We need not wonder that envy turns to soon to hatred.
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Every man must form himself as a particular being, seeking, however, to attain that general idea of which all mankind are constituents.
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We often feel that we lack something, and seem to see that very quality in someone else, promptly attributing all our own qualities to him too, and a kind of ideal contentment as well. And so the happy mortal is a model of complete perfection--which we have ourselves created.
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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.
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I am not omniscient, but I know a lot.
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Devote each day to the object then in time and every evening will find something done.
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Without my attempts in natural science, I should never have learned to know mankind such as it is. In nothing else can we so closely approach pure contemplation and thought, so closely observe the errors of the senses and of the understanding, the weak and strong points of character.