Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Quotes
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Whoever, in middle age, attempts to realize the wishes and hopes of his early youth, invariably deceives himself. Each ten years of a man's life has its own fortunes, its own hopes, its own desires.
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Ah! my poor brain is racked and crazed, My spirit and senses amazed!
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The flowers of life are but visionary. How many pass away and leave no trace behind! How few yield any fruit,--and the fruit itself, how rarely does it ripen! And yet there are flowers enough; and is it not strange, my friend, that we should suffer the little that does really ripen to rot, decay, and perish unenjoyed?
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Too rigid scruples are concealed pride.
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The right man is the one who seizes the moment.
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It is working within limits that the craftsman reveals himself.
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Truth is a torch, but a terrific one; therefore we all try to reach it with closed eyes, lest we should be scorched.
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Great endowments often announce themselves in youth in the form of singularity and awkwardness.
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Only the heart without a stain knows ease.
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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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Superstition is rooted in a much deeper and more sensitive layer of the psyche than skepticism.
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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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Our foibles are really what make us lovable.
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Only by joy and sorrow does a person know anything about themselves and their destiny. They learn what to do and what to avoid.
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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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Character develops itself in the stream of life.
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Experience is only half of experience.
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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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Fret not over the irretrievable, but ever act as if thy life were just begun.
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What I possess I would gladly retain. Change amuses the mind, yet scarcely profits.
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My counsel is, to force nothing, and rather to trifle and sleep away all unproductive days and hours, than on such days to compose something that will afterwards give no pleasure.
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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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It seems to never occur to fools that merit and good fortune are closely united.
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We accept every person in the world as that for which he gives himself out, only he must give himself out for something. We can put up with the unpleasant more easily than we can endure the insignificant.