Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Quotes
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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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No wise combatant underestimates their antagonist.
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The fine emotions whence our lives we mold Lie in the earthly tumult dumb and cold.
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The further one advances in experience, the closer one comes to the unfathomable; the more one learns to utilize experience, the more one recognizes that the unfathomable is of no practical value.
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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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Even dirt glitters when the sun is shining upon it.
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We are accustomed to see men deride what they do not understand, and snarl at the good and beautiful because it lies beyond their sympathies.
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A person hears only what they understand.
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None are so hopelessly enslaved, as those who falsely believe they are free. The truth has been kept from the depth of their minds by masters who rule them with lies. They feed them on falsehoods till wrong looks like right in their eyes.
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If you don't know foreign languages, you don't know anything about your own.
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Our foibles are really what make us lovable.
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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?
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If we are out of synch with ourselves, everything is out of synch for us.
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Thou shalt abstain, Renounce, refrain.
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Stood I, O Nature! man alone in thee, Then were it worth one's while a man to be.
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They should be ashamed of themselves, all these sober people!
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Mannerism is always longing to have done, and has no true enjoyment in work. A genuine, really great talent, on the other hand, has its greatest happiness in execution.
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Only he who finds empiricism irksome is driven to method.
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I have never looked at foreign countries or gone there but with the purpose of getting to know the general human qualities that are spread all over the earth in very different forms, and then to find these qualities again in my own country and to recognize and to further them.
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I always seek the good that is in people and leave the bad to Him who made mankind and knows how to round off the corners.
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Alas! how much there is in education, and in our social institutions, to prepare us and our children for insanity.
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Man usually believes, if only words he hears, That also with them goes material for thinking.
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It is a misfortune to pass at once from observation to conclusion, and to regard both as of equal value; but it befalls many a student.
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Age merely shows what children we remain.