Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Quotes
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Give me the benefit of your convictions, if you have any; but keep your doubts to yourself, for I have enough of my own.
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Know thyself? If I knew myself I would run away.
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Men in a state of nature, uncivilized nations, children, have a great fondness for colors in their utmost brightness, and especially for yellow-red.
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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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It is working within limits that the craftsman reveals himself.
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Oh, happy he who still hopes he can emerge from Error's boundless sea! - Faust.
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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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If you start to think of your physical and moral condition, you usually find that you are sick.
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To tremble before anticipated evils is to bemoan what thou hast never lost.
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Life belongs to the living, and he who lives must be prepared for changes.
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Der Irrthum verhält sich gegen das Wahre wie der Schlaf gegen das Wachen. Ich habe bemerkt, daß man aus dem Irren sich wie erquickt wieder zu dem Wahren hinwende.
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The person born with a talent they are meant to use will find their greatest happiness in using it.
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One says a lot in vain, refusing;The other mainly hears the 'No.'
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The mob has nothing to lose, everything to gain.
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Man usually believes, if only words he hears, That also with them goes material for thinking.
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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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Prudent and active men, who know their strength and use it with limit and circumspection, alone go far in the affairs of the world.
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The deepest, the only theme of human history, compared to which all others are of subordinate importance, is the conflict of skepticism with faith.
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Being brilliant is no great feat if you respect nothing.
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Thus I reel from desire to fulfillment and in fulfillment languish for desire.
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When I make a mistake everyone can see it, but not when I lie.
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The question "From where does the poet get it?" addresses only the what, nobody learns anything about the how when asking that question.
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One can stand anything except a succession of ordinary days.
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Man's restlessness makes him strive.