Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Quotes
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Never let a day pass without looking at some perfect work of art, hearing some great piece of music and reading, in part, some great book.
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No one would talk much in society, if he knew how often he misunderstands others.
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Everything is both simpler than we can imagine and more entangled than we can conceive.
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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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Woe to him who would ascribe something like reason to Chance, and make a religion of surrendering to it.
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Great endowments often announce themselves in youth in the form of singularity and awkwardness.
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What is fruitful alone is true.
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The person who in shaky times also wavers only increases the evil, but the person of firm decision fashions the universe.
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Truth is a torch, but a terrific one; therefore we all try to reach it with closed eyes, lest we should be scorched.
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All poetry is supposed to be instructive but in an unnoticeable manner; it is supposed to make us aware of what it would be valuable to instruct ourselves in; we must deduce the lesson on our own, just as with life.
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Poor fool! in whose petty estimation all things are little.
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It is unpleasant to miss even the most trifling thing to which we have been accustomed.
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The modern age has a false sense of superiority, because of the great mass of data at its disposal. But the valid criterion of distinction is rather the extent to which man knows how to form and master the material at his command.
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The thinking person has the strange characteristic to like to create a fantasy in the place of the unsolved problem, a fantasy that stays with the person even when the problem has been solved and truth made its appearance.
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Whoever, in middle age, attempts to realize the wishes and hopes of his early youth, invariably deceives himself. Each ten years of a man's life has its own fortunes, its own hopes, its own desires.
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If a man writes a book, let him set down only what he knows. I have guesses enough of my own.
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The field of experience is the whole universe in all directions. Theory remains shut up within the limits of human faculties.
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Too rigid scruples are concealed pride.
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Well-mannered children could be conceived if the parents were well-mannered.
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Mathematicians are like Frenchmen: whatever you say to them they translate into their own language and forthwith it is something entirely different.
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The happy do not believe in miracles.
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Faith is like private capital, stored in one's own house. It is like a public savings bank or loan office, from which individuals receive assistance in their days of need; but here the creditor quietly takes his interest for himself.
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The public wishes itself to be managed like a woman; one must say nothing to it except what it likes to hear.
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In comradeship is danger countered best.