Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Quotes
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Well-mannered children could be conceived if the parents were well-mannered.
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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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He who only tastes his error will long dwell with it, will take delight in it as in a singular felicity; while he who drains it to the dregs will, if he be not crazy, find it to be what it is.
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And step by step, along the path of life, There's nothing true but Heaven.
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But when all is said, the greatest art is to limit and isolate oneself.
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Wer fremde Sprachen nicht kennt, weiss nichts von seiner eigenen.He who is ignorant of foreign languages, knows not his own.
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It is not enough to have knowledge; one must apply it. It is not enough to have wishes; one must also accomplish it.
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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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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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The little man is still a man.
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It seems to me that every phenomenon, every fact, itself is the really interesting object. Whoever explains it, or connects it with other events, usually only amuses himself or makes sport of us, as, for instance, the naturalist or historian. But a single action or event is interesting, not because it is explainable, but because it is true.
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Only the heart without a stain knows ease.
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In all times it is only individuals that have advanced science, not the age.
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A vain man can never be utterly ruthless: he wants to win applause and therefore he accommodates himself to others.
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True art can only spring from the intimate linking of the serious and the playful.
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Do thine own task, and be therewith content.
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What dazzles, for the moment spends its spirit; Whats genuine, shall posterity inherit.
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Ich singe, wie der Vogel singtDer in den Zweigen wohnet.
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Great passions are incurable diseases.
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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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Several classical sayings that one likes to repeat had quite a different meaning from the ones later times attributed to them.
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The philosophers must station themselves in the middle.
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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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Each one of us must carry within the proof of immortality, it cannot be given from outside of us. To be sure, everything in natureis change but behind the change there is something eternal.