Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Quotes
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Mannerism is always longing to have done, and has no true enjoyment in work. A genuine, really great talent, on the other hand, has its greatest happiness in execution.
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Only the heart without a stain knows ease.
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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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Every great idea exerts, on first appearing, a tyrannical influence: Hence, the advantages it brings are turned all too soon into disadvantages.
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Whoso shrinks from ideas ends by having nothing but sensations.
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Time flies, and what is past is done.
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We must not take the faults of our youth with us into old age, for age brings along its own defects.
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Ah! my poor brain is racked and crazed, My spirit and senses amazed!
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Character develops itself in the stream of life.
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You'll never attain it unless you know the feeling.
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We can really respect a man only if he doesn't always look out for himself.
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He who wishes to exert a useful influence must be careful to insult nothing. Let him not be troubled by what seems absurd, but concentrate his energies to the creation of what is good. He must not demolish, but build. He must raise temples where mankind may come and partake of the purest pleasure.
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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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Everything in science depends on what one calls an aperch, on becoming aware of what is at the bottom of the phenomena. Such becoming aware is infinitely fertile.
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A great deal may be done by severity, more by love, but most by clear discernment and impartial justice.
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Art rests on a kind of religious sense, on a deep, steadfast earnestness; and on this account it unites so readily with religion.
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One never goes so far as when one doesn't know where one is going.
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Culture which smooth the whole world licks, Also unto the devil sticks.
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Error is to truth as sleep is to waking. I have observed that one turns, as if refreshed, from error back to truth.
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When translating one must proceed up to the intranslatable; only then one becomes aware of the foreign nation and the foreign tongue.
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The beginning of faith is the beginning of fruitfulness; but the beginning of unbelief, however glittering, is empty.
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The whole history of the Christian Church is a mixture of errors and violence.
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Strike the dog dead, it's but a critic!
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The main thing is to have a soul that loves the truth and harbours it where he finds it. And another thing: truth requires constant repetition, because error is being preached about us all the time, and not only by isolated individuals but by the masses. In the newspapers and encyclopedias, in schools and universities, everywhere error rides high and basks in the consciousness of having the majority on its side.