Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Quotes
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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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Only he who finds empiricism irksome is driven to method.
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Over all the mountain tops is peace.
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Unlimited activity, of whatever kind, must end in bankruptcy.
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The worst is that the very hardest thinking will not bring thoughts. They must come like good children of God and cry, "Here we are." You expend effort and energy thinking hard. Then, after you have given up, they come sauntering in with their hands in their pockets. If the effort had not been made to open the door, however, who knows when they could have come.
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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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All our knowledge is symbolic.
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Neither a work of nature nor one of art we get to know when they have been finished; we must surprise them in the process of beingcreated so as to understand them to some degree.
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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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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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Thou shalt abstain, Renounce, refrain.
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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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And those whom once my song had cheered and gladdened, If still they live, rove through the world now saddened.
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Nine requisites for contented living: Health enough to make work a pleasure. Wealth enough to support your needs. Strength to battle with difficulties and overcome them. Grace enough to confess your sins and forsake them. Patience enough to toil until some good is accomplished. Charity enough to see some good in your neighbor. Love enough to move you to be useful and helpful to others. Faith enough to make real the things of God. Hope enough to remove all anxious fears concerning the future.
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The church alone beyond all question Has for ill-gotten goods the right digestion.
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Every man bears something within him that, if it were publicly announced, would excite feelings of aversion.
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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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Our virtues and view spring from one root.
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To understand one thing well is better than understanding many things by halves.
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What sort of God would it be, who only pushed from without.
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They teach in academies far too many things, and far too much that is useless.
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If all these devils really exist it proves there must be angels, too.
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The desire to explain what is simple by what is complex, what is easy by what is difficult, is a calamity.
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Everything perfect in its kind has to transcend its own kind, it must become something different and incomparable. In some notes the nightingale is still a bird; then it rises above its class and seems to suggest to every winged creature what singing is truly like.