Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Quotes
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Voluntary dependence is the wonderful form of existence, and how could that be possible without love?
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Progress has not followed a straight ascending line, but a spiral with rhythms of progress and retrogression, of evolution and dissolution.
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Wealth and speed are what the world admires, what each pursues. Railways, express mails, steamships and every possible facility for communications are the achievement in which the civilized world view and revels, only to languish in mediocrity by that very fact. Indeed, the effect of this diffusion is to spread the culture of the mediocre.
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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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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.
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Wherever a man may happen to turn, whatever a man may undertake, he will always end up by returning to that path which nature has marked out for him.
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One must ask children and birds how cherries and strawberries taste.
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For that is love's nature that it lays claim to exclusive right and that all other claims are nil.
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To understand one thing well is better than understanding many things by halves.
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The coward only threatens when he is safe.
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Character calls forth character.
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Alas, I have studied philosophy, the law as well as medicine, and to my sorrow, theology; studied them well with ardent zeal, yet here I am, a wretched fool, no wiser than I was before.
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Children, love one another, and if that is not possible-at least try to put up with one another.
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We're really up against it, we poor women: A bachelor's a hard thing to convert.
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If you want to reach the infinite, then explore every aspect of the finite.
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All one needs to do is declare oneself free and one will immediately feel dependent. If you dare to declare yourself dependent, you feel independent.
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The formation of one's character ought to be everyone's chief aim.
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I wish the crowd to feel itself well treated, Especially since it lives and lets me live.
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Cursed Mammon be, when he with treasures To restless action spurs our fate! Cursed when for soft, indulgent leisures, He lays for us the pillows straight.
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Few men have imagination enough for reality.
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Great thoughts and a pure heart, that is what we should ask from God.
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Age childish makes, they say, but 'tis not true; We're only genuine children still in Age's season. [Ger., Das Alter macht nicht kindisch, wie man spricht, Es findet uns nur noch als wahre Kinder.]
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Courage is the commitment to begin without any guarantee of success.
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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.