Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Quotes
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The art of living rightly is like all arts; it must be learned and practiced with incessant care.
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A really great talent finds its happiness in execution.
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No one is willing to believe that adults too, like children, wander about this earth in a daze and, like children, do not know where they come from or where they are going, act as rarely as they do according to genuine motives, and are as thoroughly governed as they are by biscuits and cake and the rod.
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Our foibles are really what make us lovable.
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The iron hand of necessity commands, and her stern decree is supreme law, to which the gods even must submit. In deep silence rules the uncounselled sister of eternal fate. Whatever she lays upon thee, endure; perform whatever she commands.
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Man is made by his belief. As he believes, so he is.
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I let everyone follow his own bent, that I may be free to follow mine.
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Character develops itself in the stream of life.
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Everything which is properly business we must keep carefully separate from life. Business requires earnestness and method; life must have a freed handling.
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Nothing is good for a nation but that which arises from its own core and its own general wants, without apish imitation of another.
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Ah! my poor brain is racked and crazed, My spirit and senses amazed!
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Distrust those in whom the desire to punish is strong.
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Culture which smooth the whole world licks, Also unto the devil sticks.
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One cannot always be a hero, but one can always be a man.
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To have seen Italy without having seen Sicily is to not have seen Italy at all, for Sicily is the clue to everything.
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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.
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A man would create another man if one did not already exist, but a woman might live an eternity without even thinking of reproducing her own sex.
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Every great idea exerts, on first appearing, a tyrannical influence: Hence, the advantages it brings are turned all too soon into disadvantages.
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Sin writes histories, goodness is silent.
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Thank God when He lays a burden on thee, and thank Him when He takes it off.
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Experience is only half of experience.
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Only by joy and sorrow does a person know anything about themselves and their destiny. They learn what to do and what to avoid.
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The confidant of my vices is my master, though he were my valet.
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The main thing is to have a soul that loves the truth and harbours it where he finds it. And another thing: truth requires constant repetition, because error is being preached about us all the time, and not only by isolated individuals but by the masses. In the newspapers and encyclopedias, in schools and universities, everywhere error rides high and basks in the consciousness of having the majority on its side.