Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Quotes
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The bed of flowers Loosens amain, The beauteous snowdrops Droop o'er the plain. The crocus opens Its glowing bud, Like emeralds others, Others, like blood. With saucy gesture Primroses flare, And roguish violets, Hidden with care; And whatsoever There stirs and strives, The Spring's contented, If works and thrives.
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Der Irrthum verhält sich gegen das Wahre wie der Schlaf gegen das Wachen. Ich habe bemerkt, daß man aus dem Irren sich wie erquickt wieder zu dem Wahren hinwende.
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In comradeship is danger countered best.
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Legislators and revolutionaries who promise both equality and liberty are visionaries and charlatans.
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Ich singe, wie der Vogel singtDer in den Zweigen wohnet.
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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.
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I had rather be Mercury, the smallest among seven planets, revolving round the sun, than the first among five moons revolving round Saturn.
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And step by step, along the path of life, There's nothing true but Heaven.
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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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Know thyself? If I knew myself I would run away.
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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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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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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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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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Man can only endure a certain degree of unhappiness; what is beyond that either annihilates him or passes by him and leaves him apathetic.
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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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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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True art can only spring from the intimate linking of the serious and the playful.
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Great passions are incurable diseases.
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The world is so great and rich, and life so full of variety, that you can never lack occasions for poems.
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New inventions can and will be made; however, nothing new can be thought of that concerns moral man. Everything has already been thought and said which at best we can express in different forms and give new expressions to.
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In all times it is only individuals that have advanced science, not the age.
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Behaviour is a mirror in which everyone shows his image.
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A vain man can never be utterly ruthless: he wants to win applause and therefore he accommodates himself to others.