Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Quotes
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Doesn't surprise me that Christ our Lord preferred to live with whores and sinners, seeing I go in for that myself.
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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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A good person, striving dimly, Is well aware of the right path.
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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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What man does not know, Or has not thought of, Wanders in the night Through the labyrinth of the mind.
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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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The best way to understand a painting is by drawing it.
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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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I do not speak of what I cannot praise.
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Great passions are incurable diseases.
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I can tell you, honest friend, what to believe: believe life; it teaches better that book or orator.
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Over all the mountain tops is peace. In all treetops you perceive scarcely a breath. The little birds in the forest are silent. Wait then; soon, you too, will have peace.
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And step by step, along the path of life, There's nothing true but Heaven.
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Traveling is like gambling: it is always connected with winning and losing and generally where it is least expected we receive, more or less than what we hoped for.
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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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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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I could never have known so well how paltry men are, and how little they care for really high aims, if I had not tested them by my scientific researches. Thus I saw that most men only care for science so far as they get a living by it, and that they worship even error when it affords them a subsistence.
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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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In all times it is only individuals that have advanced science, not the age.
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Nothing is more odious than the majority, for it consists of a few powerful leaders, a certain number of accommodating scoundrels and submissive weaklings, and a mass of men who trot after them without thinking, or knowing their own minds.
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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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What right those who govern have to govern they don't question, they just govern. Whether the people have a right to depose them that doesn't concern them. All they are concerned with is that the people will not be tempted to depose them.
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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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Nine requisites for contented living: Health enough to make work a pleasure. Wealth enough to support your needs. Strength to battle with difficulties and overcome them. Grace enough to confess your sins and forsake them. Patience enough to toil until some good is accomplished. Charity enough to see some good in your neighbor. Love enough to move you to be useful and helpful to others. Faith enough to make real the things of God. Hope enough to remove all anxious fears concerning the future.