Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Quotes
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We are our own devils; we drive ourselves out of our Edens.
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Let your trouble be Light will follow dark Though the heaven falls You may hear the lark.
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There is nothing in life so irrational, that good sense and chance may not set it to rights; nothing so rational, that folly and chance may not utterly confound it.
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Only the heart without a stain knows ease.
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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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Happy contractedness of youth, nay, of mankind in general, that they think neither of the high nor the deep, of the true nor the false, but only of what is suited to their own conceptions.
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We can always redeem the man who aspires and strives.
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We can really respect a man only if he doesn't always look out for himself.
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It is one of Heaven's best gifts to hold such a dear creature in one's arms.
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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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Correction does much, but encouragement does more. Encouragement after censure is as the sun after a shower.
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Everyone holds his fortune in his own hands, like a sculptor the raw material he will fashion into a figure. But it's the same with that type of artistic activity as with all others: We are merely born with the capability to do it. The Skill to mold the material into what we want must be learned and attentively cultivated.
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This is what they all come to who exclusively harp on experience. They do not stop to consider that experience is only one half of experience.
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No one would talk much in society, if he knew how often he misunderstands others.
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It is unpleasant to miss even the most trifling thing to which we have been accustomed.
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A leaf that is destined to grow large is full of grooves and wrinkles at the start. Now if one has no patience and wants it smooth offhand like a willow leaf, there is trouble ahead.
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What is predestination? Answer: God is more powerful and wiser than we are, therefore he deals with us according to his pleasure.
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The rabble also vent their rage in words.
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Woe to him who would ascribe something like reason to Chance, and make a religion of surrendering to it.
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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 whole history of the Christian Church is a mixture of errors and violence.
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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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He who does not stretch himself according to the coverlet finds his feet uncovered.
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Water its living strength first shows, When obstacles its course oppose.