Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Quotes
-
To tremble before anticipated evils is to bemoan what thou hast never lost.
-
When I make a mistake everyone can see it, but not when I lie.
-
Any trifle is enough to entertain two lovers.
-
One must ask children and birds how cherries and strawberries taste.
-
For that is love's nature that it lays claim to exclusive right and that all other claims are nil.
-
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.
-
Character - in things great and small - is indicated when a man (or person) pursues with sustained follow-through what he feels himself capable of doing.
-
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.
-
What dazzles, for the moment spends its spirit; Whats genuine, shall posterity inherit.
-
The spirit from which we act is the principal matter.
-
He who does not see the whole world in his friends, does not deserve that the world should hear of him.
-
The coward only threatens when he is safe.
-
We are our own aptest deceiver.
-
Every man has enough power left to carry out that of which he is convinced.
-
Yes! to this thought I hold with firm persistence; The last result of wisdom stamps it true; He only earns his freedom and existence Who daily conquers them anew.
-
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.
-
To appear at church every Sunday; to look down upon, and let himself be looked at for an hour by the congregation, is the best means of becoming popular which can be recommended to a young sovereign.
-
Beauty can never really understand itself.
-
Certain defects are necessary for the existence of individuality.
-
Method will teach you to win time.
-
Whatever is the object of a saint's hope is the subject of his prayer.
-
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.
-
Woman is mistress of the art of completely imbittering the life of the person on whom she depends.
-
Hypotheses are the scaffolds which are erected in front of a building and removedd when the building is completed. They are indispensable to the worker; but the worker must not mistake the scaffolding for the building.