Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Quotes
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Woe to him who would ascribe something like reason to Chance, and make a religion of surrendering to 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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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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The intelligent man finds almost everything ridiculous, the sensible man hardly anything.
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They should be ashamed of themselves, all these sober people!
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Superstition is rooted in a much deeper and more sensitive layer of the psyche than skepticism.
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The public wishes itself to be managed like a woman; one must say nothing to it except what it likes to hear.
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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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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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Thus I reel from desire to fulfillment and in fulfillment languish for desire.
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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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The longer I live, the more it grieves me to see man, who occupies his supreme place for the very purpose of imposing his will upon nature, and freeing himself and his from an outrageous necessity--to see him taken up with some false notion, and doing just the opposite of what he wants to do; and then, because the whole bent of his mind is spoilt, bungling miserably over everything.
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We don't get to know people when they come to us; we must go to them to find out what they are like.
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What is fruitful alone is true.
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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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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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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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Ignorant men raise questions that wise men answered a thousand years ago.
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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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Freedom consists not in refusing to recognize anything above us, but in respecting something which is above us; for by respecting it, we raise ourselves to it, and, by our very acknowledgment, prove that we bear within ourselves what is higher, and are worthy to be on a level with it.
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And those whom once my song had cheered and gladdened, If still they live, rove through the world now saddened.
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Being brilliant is no great feat if you respect nothing.
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We can really respect a man only if he doesn't always look out for himself.