Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Quotes
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The happy do not believe in miracles.
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What makes poetry? A full heart, brimful of one noble passion.
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Art is in itself noble; that is why the artist has no fear of what is common. This, indeed, is already ennobled when he takes it up.
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Take care of your body with steadfast fidelity. The soul must see through these eyes alone, and if they are dim, the whole world is clouded.
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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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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 thought of death leaves me in perfect peace, for I have a firm conviction that our spirit is a being of indestructible nature; it works on from eternity to eternity, it is like the sun, which though it seems to set to our mortal eyes, does not really set, but shines on perpetually.
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We cannot too soon convince ourselves how easily we may be dispensed with in the world. What important personages we imagine ourselves to be! We think that we alone are the life of the circle in which we move; in our absence, we fancy that life, existence, breath will come to a general pause, and, alas, the gap which we leave is scarcely perceptible, so quickly is it filled again; nay, it is often the place, if not of something better, at least for something more agreeable.
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This is the true measure of love, When we believe that we alone can love, That no one could ever have loved so before us, And that no one will ever love in the same way after us.
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Whatever is the object of a saint's hope is the subject of his prayer.
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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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One criticizes the English for carrying their teapots wherever they go, even lugging them up Mount Etna. But doesn't every nationhave its teapot, in which, even when traveling, it brews the dried bundles of herbs brought from home?
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Whatever Nature undertakes, she can only accomplish it in a sequence. She never makes a leap.
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Let's plunge ourselves into the roar of time, the whirl of accident; may pain and pleasure, success and failure, shift as they will -- it's only action that can make a man.
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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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What is not started today is never finished tomorrow.
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Superstition is rooted in a much deeper and more sensitive layer of the psyche than skepticism.
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Man errs, till he has ceased to strive.
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All that is transitory is but a metaphor.
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Enjoy what you can, endure what you must.
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If you start to think of your physical and moral condition, you usually find that you are sick.
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The most fortunate of men, Be he a king or commoner, is he Whose welfare is assured in his own home.
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National literature does not mean much these days; now is the age of world literature, and every one must contribute to hasten thearrival of that age.
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Rash, inexperienced youth holds itself a chosen instrument, and allows itself unbounded license.