Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Quotes
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I never knew how to worship until I knew how to love.
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Begin by instructing yourself, then you will receive instruction from others.
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Whoso shrinks from ideas ends by having nothing but sensations.
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What is not started today is never finished tomorrow.
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But when all is said, the greatest art is to limit and isolate oneself.
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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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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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The art of living rightly is like all arts; it must be learned and practiced with incessant care.
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We are pantheists as natural scientists, polytheists as poets, and monotheists as moral beings.
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Women are silver dishes into which we put golden apples.
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Every second is of infinite value.
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A judge who cannot punish, in the end associates themselves with the criminal.
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No prudent antagonist thinks light of his adversaries.
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Man's restlessness makes him strive.
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The thought of death leaves me in perfect peace, for I have a firm conviction that our spirit is a being of indestructible nature; it works on from eternity to eternity, it is like the sun, which though it seems to set to our mortal eyes, does not really set, but shines on perpetually.
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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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Correction does much, but encouragement does more. Encouragement after censure is as the sun after a shower.
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The little man is still a man.
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Thus I reel from desire to fulfillment and in fulfillment languish for desire.
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Art is in itself noble; that is why the artist has no fear of what is common. This, indeed, is already ennobled when he takes it up.
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I hate everything that merely instructs me without augmenting or directly invigorating my activity.
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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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Certain defects are necessary for the existence of individuality.
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Everything is both simpler than we can imagine and more entangled than we can conceive.