Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Quotes
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Marriage is the beginning and pinnacle of civilization.
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No wise combatant underestimates their antagonist.
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All our knowledge is symbolic.
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A great artist... must be shaken by the naked truths that will not be comforted. This divine discontent, this disequilibrium, this state of inner tension is the source of artistic energy.
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Plunge boldly into the thick of life!
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Hold your powers together for something good and let everything go that is for you without result and is not suited to you.
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Perseverance is a silent power that grows irresistibly greater with time.
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On top of the world, or in the depths of despair.
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If you want to make life easy, make it hard.
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Lose the day loitering, 'twill be the same story To-morrow, and the next more dilatory, For indecision brings its own delays, And days are lost lamenting o'er lost days. Are you in earnest? Seize this very minute! What you can do, or think you can, begin it! Only engage, and then the mind grows heated; Begin it, and the work will be completed.
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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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The church alone beyond all question Has for ill-gotten goods the right digestion.
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For usually people resist as long as they can to dismiss the fool they harbor in their bosom, they resist to confess a major mistake or to admit a truth that makes them despair.
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It seems to me that every phenomenon, every fact, itself is the really interesting object. Whoever explains it, or connects it with other events, usually only amuses himself or makes sport of us, as, for instance, the naturalist or historian. But a single action or event is interesting, not because it is explainable, but because it is true.
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If society gives up the right to impose the death penalty, then self-help will appear again and personal vendettas will be around the corner.
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The use of a thing is only a part of its significance. To know anything thoroughly, to have the full command of it in all its appliances, we must study it on its own account, independently of any special application.
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As soon as you are in a social setting, you better take away the key to the lock of your heart and pocket it; those who leave thekey in the lock are fools.
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The mark of highest originality lies in the ability to develop a familiar idea so fruitfully that it would seem no one else would ever have discovered so much to be hidden in it.
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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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Nature goes her own way, and all that to us seems an exception is really according to order.
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Life belongs to the living, and he who lives must be prepared for changes.
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You shall abstain, shall abstain. That is the eternal song.
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The man of understanding finds everything laughable.
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There is no trifling with nature; it is always true, grave, and severe; it is always in the light, and the faults and errors fall to our share. It defies incompetency, but reveals its secrets to the competent, the truthful, and the pure.