Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Quotes
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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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Experience is only half of experience.
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To have a positive religion is not necessary. To be in harmony with yourself and the universe is what counts, and this is possible without positive and specific formulation in words.
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Man's restlessness makes him strive.
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The person who in shaky times also wavers only increases the evil, but the person of firm decision fashions the universe.
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If we are out of synch with ourselves, everything is out of synch for us.
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Whatever necessity lays upon thee, endure; whatever she commands, do.
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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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The art of living rightly is like all arts; it must be learned and practiced with incessant care.
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Painting predicates what man wants to see, and what man ought to see, not what he ordinarily sees.
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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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The greatest act of faith takes place when a man finally decides that he is not God.
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Character - in things great and small - is indicated when a man (or person) pursues with sustained follow-through what he feels himself capable of doing.
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It seems to never occur to fools that merit and good fortune are closely united.
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Over all the mountain tops is peace. In all treetops you perceive scarcely a breath. The little birds in the forest are silent. Wait then; soon, you too, will have peace.
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Our foibles are really what make us lovable.
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The highest happiness of man ... is to have probed what is knowable and quietly to revere what is unknowable.
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For just when ideas fail, a word comes in to save the situation.
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The greatest joy of a thinking man is to have searched the explored and to quietly revere the unexplored.
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Progress has not followed a straight ascending line, but a spiral with rhythms of progress and retrogression, of evolution and dissolution.
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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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It is better to be doing the most insignificant thing than to reckon even a half-hour insignificant.
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This is what they all come to who exclusively harp on experience. They do not stop to consider that experience is only one half of experience.
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If children grew up according to early indications, we should have nothing but geniuses.