Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Quotes
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He is happy as well as great who needs neither to obey nor to command in order to be something.
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I do not speak of what I cannot praise.
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We don't get to know people when they come to us; we must go to them to find out what they are like.
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In comradeship is danger countered best.
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A person is never happy till their vague strivings has itself marked out its proper limitations.
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Clever people are always the best conversations lexicon.
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It is better to be doing the most insignificant thing than to reckon even a half-hour insignificant.
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Thou shalt abstain, Renounce, refrain.
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The first and last thing required of genius is the love of truth. [Ger., Das erste und letzte, was vom Genie gefordert wird, ist Wahreits-Liebe.]
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I never knew how to worship until I knew how to love.
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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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The mark of highest originality lies in the ability to develop a familiar idea so fruitfully that it would seem no one else would ever have discovered so much to be hidden in it.
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Art is based on a strong sentiment of religion,--on a profound and mighty earnestness; hence it is so prone to co-operate with religion.
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In nature we never see anything isolated, but everything in connection with something else which is before it, beside it, under it and over it.
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Only he who finds empiricism irksome is driven to method.
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To think is easy. To act is hard. But the hardest thing in the world is to act in accordance with your thinking.
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Legislators and revolutionaries who promise both equality and liberty are visionaries and charlatans.
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Forget not that the man who cannot enjoy his own natural gifts in silence, and find his reward in the exercise of them, will generally find himself badly off.
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Man can find no better retreat from the world than art, and man can find no stronger link with the world than art.
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When you are in conflict with someone, there is one factor that can make the difference between damaging your relationship and deepening it. That factor is attitude. We don't get to know people when they come to us; we must go to them to find out what they are like.
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The soul that sees beauty may sometimes walk alone.
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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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You'll never attain it unless you know the feeling.
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The sea is flowing ever, The land retains it never.