Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Quotes
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We must not take the faults of our youth with us into old age, for age brings along its own defects.
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One never goes so far as when one doesn't know where one is going.
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Hatred is partial, but love is still more so.
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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.
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If you don't know foreign languages, you don't know anything about your own.
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Voluntary dependence is the wonderful form of existence, and how could that be possible without love?
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Man's restlessness makes him strive.
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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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I have heard myself accused of being an opponent, an enemy of mathematics, which no one can value more highly than I, for it accomplishes the very thing whose achievement has been denied me.
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Neither art thou the man to catch the fiend and hold him!
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We can really respect a man only if he doesn't always look out for himself.
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When translating one must proceed up to the intranslatable; only then one becomes aware of the foreign nation and the foreign tongue.
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If we are out of synch with ourselves, everything is out of synch for us.
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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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I do not speak of what I cannot praise.
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Even dirt glitters when the sun is shining upon it.
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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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To appear at church every Sunday; to look down upon, and let himself be looked at for an hour by the congregation, is the best means of becoming popular which can be recommended to a young sovereign.
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Strike the dog dead, it's but a critic!
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How circumscribed is woman's destiny!
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A reasonable man needs only to practice moderation to find happiness.
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Poetry is the universal possession of mankind, revealing itself everywhere, and at all times, in hundreds and hundreds of men.
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The new vulcanism is really a daring attempt to connect the present, incomprehensible world to a past, unknown one.
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Der Irrthum verhält sich gegen das Wahre wie der Schlaf gegen das Wachen. Ich habe bemerkt, daß man aus dem Irren sich wie erquickt wieder zu dem Wahren hinwende.