Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Quotes
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I let everyone follow his own bent, that I may be free to follow mine.
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My counsel is, to force nothing, and rather to trifle and sleep away all unproductive days and hours, than on such days to compose something that will afterwards give no pleasure.
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He who is firm and resolute in will molds the world to himself.
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Thinking is easy, acting is difficult, and to put one's thoughts into action is the most difficult thing in the world.
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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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Painting predicates what man wants to see, and what man ought to see, not what he ordinarily sees.
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Poetry is the universal possession of mankind, revealing itself everywhere, and at all times, in hundreds and hundreds of men.
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There is no surer method of evading the world than by following Art, and no surer method of linking oneself to it than by Art.
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Method will teach you to win time.
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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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Duration in change.
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I am certain that I have been here as I am now a thousand times before, and I hope to return a thousand times... Man is a dialogue between nature and God. On other planets this dialogue will doubtless be of a higher and profounder character. What is lacking is Self-Knowledge. After that the rest will follow.
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Art rests on a kind of religious sense, on a deep, steadfast earnestness; and on this account it unites so readily with religion.
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The hero draws inspiration from the virtue of his ancestors.
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Distrust those in whom the desire to punish is strong.
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One must ask children and birds how cherries and strawberries taste.
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The mob has nothing to lose, everything to gain.
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It is working within limits that the craftsman reveals himself.
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Let him who believes in immortality enjoy his happiness in silence; he has no reason to give himself airs about it.
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Confronted by outstanding merit, there is no way of saving one's ego except by love.
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Such is the frailty of man that even where he makes the truest and most forcible impression in the memory, in the heart of his beloved, there also he must perish.
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A great scholar is seldom a great philosopher.
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The universal subjugator, the commonplace.
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Man usually believes, if only words he hears, That also with them goes material for thinking.