Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Quotes
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Legislators and revolutionaries who promise both equality and liberty are visionaries and charlatans.
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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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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's restlessness makes him strive.
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Art will always be art.
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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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We are pantheists as natural scientists, polytheists as poets, and monotheists as moral beings.
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The happy do not believe in miracles.
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Passions are defects or virtues in the highest power.
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The beautiful is a phenomenon which is never apparent of itself, but is reflected in a thousand different works of the creator.
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The day is committed to error and floundering; success and achievement are matters of long range.
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I hate everything that merely instructs me without augmenting or directly invigorating my activity.
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Thus I reel from desire to fulfillment and in fulfillment languish for desire.
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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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Never let a day pass without looking at some perfect work of art, hearing some great piece of music and reading, in part, some great book.
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Enjoy what you can, endure what you must.
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The philosophers must station themselves in the middle.
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Don't give us your doubts, gives us your certainties, for we have doubts enough of our own.
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But when all is said, the greatest art is to limit and isolate oneself.
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Do thine own task, and be therewith content.
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One never goes further than when they do not know where they are going.
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The intelligent man finds almost everything ridiculous, the sensible man hardly anything.
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What is predestination? Answer: God is more powerful and wiser than we are, therefore he deals with us according to his pleasure.
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Everything is both simpler than we can imagine and more entangled than we can conceive.