Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Quotes
-
Each one of us must carry within the proof of immortality, it cannot be given from outside of us. To be sure, everything in natureis change but behind the change there is something eternal.
-
Enjoy what thou has inherited from thy sires if thou wouldn't really possess it. What we employ and use is never an oppressive burden; what the moment brings forth, that only can it profit by.
-
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?
-
The art of living rightly is like all arts; it must be learned and practiced with incessant care.
-
Whatever is the object of a saint's hope is the subject of his prayer.
-
Stood I, O Nature! man alone in thee, Then were it worth one's while a man to be.
-
All poetry is supposed to be instructive but in an unnoticeable manner; it is supposed to make us aware of what it would be valuable to instruct ourselves in; we must deduce the lesson on our own, just as with life.
-
The Bible grows more beautiful, as we grow in our understanding of it.
-
I never knew how to worship until I knew how to love.
-
Ah! my poor brain is racked and crazed, My spirit and senses amazed!
-
Man is made by his belief. As he believes, so he is.
-
The old lose one of the greatest privileges of man, for they are no longer judged by their contemporaries.
-
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.
-
Art will always be art.
-
The bed of flowers Loosens amain, The beauteous snowdrops Droop o'er the plain. The crocus opens Its glowing bud, Like emeralds others, Others, like blood. With saucy gesture Primroses flare, And roguish violets, Hidden with care; And whatsoever There stirs and strives, The Spring's contented, If works and thrives.
-
Nine requisites for contented living: Health enough to make work a pleasure. Wealth enough to support your needs. Strength to battle with difficulties and overcome them. Grace enough to confess your sins and forsake them. Patience enough to toil until some good is accomplished. Charity enough to see some good in your neighbor. Love enough to move you to be useful and helpful to others. Faith enough to make real the things of God. Hope enough to remove all anxious fears concerning the future.
-
Error is to truth as sleep is to waking. I have observed that one turns, as if refreshed, from error back to truth.
-
There is a great difference, whether the poet seeks the particular for the sake of the general or sees the general in the particular. From the former procedure there ensues allegory, in which the particular serves only as illustration, as example of the general. The latter procedure, however, is genuinely the nature of poetry; it expresses something particular, without thinking of the general or pointing to it.
-
Let him who believes in immortality enjoy his happiness in silence; he has no reason to give himself airs about it.
-
When translating one must proceed up to the intranslatable; only then one becomes aware of the foreign nation and the foreign tongue.
-
Poetry is the universal possession of mankind, revealing itself everywhere, and at all times, in hundreds and hundreds of men.
-
Distrust those in whom the desire to punish is strong.
-
Wealth and speed are what the world admires, what each pursues. Railways, express mails, steamships and every possible facility for communications are the achievement in which the civilized world view and revels, only to languish in mediocrity by that very fact. Indeed, the effect of this diffusion is to spread the culture of the mediocre.
-
Is not the core of nature in the heart of man?