Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Quotes
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What one has wished for in youth, in old age one has in abundance.
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Strike the dog dead, it's but a critic!
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Clever people are always the best conversations lexicon.
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To think is easy. To act is hard. But the hardest thing in the world is to act in accordance with your thinking.
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A king there was once reigning, Who had a goodly flea, Him loved he without feigning, As his own son were he!
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As our inclinations, so our opinions.
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The rabble also vent their rage in words.
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Wishes are premonitions of abilities.
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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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Good children's literature appeals not only to the child in the adult, but to the adult in the child.
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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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The greatest act of faith takes place when a man finally decides that he is not God.
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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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The beginning of faith is the beginning of fruitfulness; but the beginning of unbelief, however glittering, is empty.
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Perseverance is a silent power that grows irresistibly greater with time.
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Es gibt kein äußeres Zeichen der Höflichkeit, das nicht einen tiefen sittlichen Grund hätte. Die rechte Erziehung wäre, welche dieses Zeichen und den Grund zugleich überlieferte.
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The best way to understand a painting is by drawing it.
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Whatever liberates our spirit, without also giving us mastery over ourselves, is destructive.
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There is a great difference, whether the poet seeks the particular for the sake of the general or sees the general in the particular. From the former procedure there ensues allegory, in which the particular serves only as illustration, as example of the general. The latter procedure, however, is genuinely the nature of poetry; it expresses something particular, without thinking of the general or pointing to it.
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One errs as long as one strives.
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Do thine own task, and be therewith content.
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Rest not. Life is sweeping by; go and dare before you die. Something mighty and sublime, leave behind to conquer time.
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No skill or art is needed to grow old; the trick is to endure it.
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A useless life is an early death. [Ger., Ein unnutz Leben ist ein fruher Tod.]