Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Quotes
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I hate everything that merely instructs me without augmenting or directly invigorating my activity.
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A good person, striving dimly, Is well aware of the right path.
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To know someone here or there with whom you can feel there is understanding in spite of distances or thoughts expressed That can make life a garden.
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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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Correction does much, but encouragement does more. Encouragement after censure is as the sun after a shower.
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One errs as long as one strives.
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People are so constituted that everybody would rather undertake what they see others do, whether they have an aptitude for it or not.
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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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Wishes are premonitions of abilities.
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The best pleasures of this world are not quite true.
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Who is the wisest man? He who neither knows or wishes for anything else than what happens.
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Devote each day to the object then in time and every evening will find something done.
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Without haste! without rest! Bind the motto to thy breast! Bear it with thee as a spell; Storm or sunshine, guard it well.
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In comradeship is danger countered best.
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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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Strike the dog dead, it's but a critic!
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The Bible grows more beautiful, as we grow in our understanding of it.
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You'll never attain it unless you know the feeling.
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As our inclinations, so our opinions.
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We can always redeem the man who aspires and strives.
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To have seen Italy without having seen Sicily is to not have seen Italy at all, for Sicily is the clue to everything.
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Was glänzt, ist für den Augenblick geboren;das Echte bleibt der Nachwelt unverloren.
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Generally speaking, an author's style is a faithful copy of his mind. If you would write a lucid style, let there first be light in your own mind; and if you would write a grand style, you ought to have a grand character.
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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.