Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Quotes
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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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Some books seem to have been written, not to teach us anything, but to let us know that the author has known something.
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Here too it’s masquerade, I find: As everywhere, the dance of mind. I grasped a lovely masked procession, And caught things from a horror show… I’d gladly settle for a false impression, If it would last a little longer, though.
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You'll never attain it unless you know the feeling.
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The happy do not believe in miracles.
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Everything is both simpler than we can imagine and more entangled than we can conceive.
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Women are silver dishes into which we put golden apples.
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No prudent antagonist thinks light of his adversaries.
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Ignorant men raise questions that wise men answered a thousand years ago.
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Being brilliant is no great feat if you respect nothing.
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The intelligent man finds almost everything ridiculous, the sensible man hardly anything.
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The philosophers must station themselves in the middle.
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Man's restlessness makes him strive.
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Man errs, till he has ceased to strive.
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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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Tomorrow sees undone, what happens not to-day; Still forward press, nor never tire! The possible, with steadfast trust, Resolve should be by the forelock grasp. Then she will ne'er let go her clasp, And labors on, because she must.
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Happy contractedness of youth, nay, of mankind in general, that they think neither of the high nor the deep, of the true nor the false, but only of what is suited to their own conceptions.
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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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Whatever Nature undertakes, she can only accomplish it in a sequence. She never makes a leap.
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Der thörigste von allen Irrthümern ist, wenn junge gute Köpfe glauben, ihre Originalität zu verlieren, indem sie das Wahre anerkennen, was von andern schon anerkannt worden.
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I always had an aversion to your apostles of freedom; each but sought for himself freedom to do what he liked.
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Against criticism a man can neither protest nor defend himself; he must act in spite of it, and then it will gradually yield to him.
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The thinking person has the strange characteristic to like to create a fantasy in the place of the unsolved problem, a fantasy that stays with the person even when the problem has been solved and truth made its appearance.
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It is better to be doing the most insignificant thing than to reckon even a half-hour insignificant.