Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Quotes
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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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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.
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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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What we agree with leaves us inactive, but contradiction makes us productive.
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What sort of God would it be, who only pushed from without.
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Prudent and active men, who know their strength and use it with limit and circumspection, alone go far in the affairs of the world.
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Well-mannered children could be conceived if the parents were well-mannered.
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The Bible grows more beautiful, as we grow in our understanding of it.
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Look at a man the way he is and he only becomes worse, but look at him as if he were what he could be, then he becomes what he should be.
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Being brilliant is no great feat if you respect nothing.
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No prudent antagonist thinks light of his adversaries.
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Toleration ought in reality to be merely a transitory mood. It must lead to recognition. To tolerate is to affront.
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People have a peculiar pleasure in making converts, that is, in causing others to enjoy what they enjoy, thus finding their own likeness represented and reflected back to them.
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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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No skill or art is needed to grow old; the trick is to endure it.
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Passions are defects or virtues in the highest power.
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I hate everything that merely instructs me without augmenting or directly invigorating my activity.
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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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But when all is said, the greatest art is to limit and isolate oneself.
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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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Legislators and revolutionaries who promise both equality and liberty are visionaries and charlatans.
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The little man is still a man.
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Faith is like private capital, stored in one's own house. It is like a public savings bank or loan office, from which individuals receive assistance in their days of need; but here the creditor quietly takes his interest for himself.
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The formation of one's character ought to be everyone's chief aim.