Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Quotes
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A man sees in the world what he carries in his heart.
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Say what you will of fortitude, but show me the man who can patiently endure the laughter of fools when they have obtained an advantage over him. 'Tis only when their nonsense is without foundation that one can suffer it without complaint.
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The best slave is the one who thinks he is free.
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Nature's crown is Love. Only through Love can we come near her. She puts gulfs between all things, and all things strive to be interfused. She isolates everything, that she may draw everything together. With a few draughts from the cup of Love she repays for a life full of trouble.
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Wer immer strebend sich bemüht,Den können wir erlösen.
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I had toward the poetic art a peculiar relation which was only practical after I had cherished in my mind for a long time a subject which possessed me, a model which inspired me, a predecessor who attracted me, until at length, after I had molded it.
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Knowst thou the land where the lemon trees bloom,Where the gold orange glows in the deep thicket's gloom,Where a wind ever soft from the blue heaven blows,And the groves are of laurel and myrtle and rose?
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Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back, always ineffectiveness. Concerning all acts of initiation - creation - there is one elementary truth, the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans.
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Desire is the presentiment of our inner abilities, and the forerunner of our ultimate accomplishments.
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The eternal feminine draws us on high.
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Wind is the loving Wooer of waters; Wind blends together Billows all-foaming. Spirit of man, Thou art like unto water! Fortune of man, Thou art like unto wind!
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Sing it not in mournful numbers.
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The rainbow mirrors human aims and action. Think, and more clearly wilt thou grasp it, seeing Life is but light in many-hued reflection.
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There is nothing more frightful than ignorance in action.
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All beginnings are delightful; the threshold is the place to pause.
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One needs only to get old to become milder; I don't see anyone make a mistake I hadn't also made.
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Es irrt der Mensch, so lang er strebt.
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Everything factual is, in a sense, theory. The blue of the sky exhibits the basic laws of chromatics. There is no sense in looking for something behind phenomena: they are theory.
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Time is my estate: to Time I'm heir.
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Should I not be proud, when for twenty years I have had to admit to myself that the great Newton and all the mathematicians and noble calculators along with him were involved in a decisive error with respect to the doctrine of color, and that I among millions was the only one who knew what was right in this great subject of nature?
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The artist may be well advised to keep his work to himself till it is completed, because no one can readily help him or advise him with it...but the scientist is wiser not to withhold a single finding or a single conjecture from publicity.
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Everything that liberates our mind without at the same time imparting self-control is pernicious.
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The more one knows, the more one comprehends, the more one realizes that everything turns in a circle.
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Nature! We are surrounded by her and locked in her clasp: powerless to leave her, and powerless to come closer to her. Unasked and unwarned she takes us up into the whirl of her dance, and hurries on with us till we are weary and fall from her arms.