Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Quotes
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As great, everlasting, Adamantine laws Dictate, we must all Complete the cycles Of our existence.
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None are so hopelessly enslaved, as those who falsely believe they are free. The truth has been kept from the depth of their minds by masters who rule them with lies. They feed them on falsehoods till wrong looks like right in their eyes.
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It is a misfortune to pass at once from observation to conclusion, and to regard both as of equal value; but it befalls many a student.
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I always seek the good that is in people and leave the bad to Him who made mankind and knows how to round off the corners.
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If we examine every stage of our lives, we find that from our first breath to our last we are under the constraint of circumstances. And yet we still possess the greatest of all freedoms, the power of developing our innermost selves in harmony with the moral order of the universe, and so winning peace of heart whatever obstacles we meet.
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To accept good advice is but to increase one's own ability.
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All truths are old, and all that we have to do is recognize and utter them anew.
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If we are out of synch with ourselves, everything is out of synch for us.
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The universal subjugator, the commonplace.
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Character develops itself in the stream of life.
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The church alone beyond all question Has for ill-gotten goods the right digestion.
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Man usually believes, if only words he hears, That also with them goes material for thinking.
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He who does not stretch himself according to the coverlet finds his feet uncovered.
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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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No doubt you are right... there would be far less suffering amongst mankind if men... did not employ their imaginations so assiduously in recalling the memory of past sorrow, instead of bearing their present lot with equanimity.
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What do people mean when they talk about unhappiness? It is not so much unhappiness as impatience that from time to time possesses men, and then they choose to call themselves miserable.
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Insofar as he makes use of his healthy senses, man himself is the best and most exact scientific instrument possible. The greatest misfortune of modern physics is that its experiments have been set apart from man, as it were, physics refuses to recognize nature in anything not shown by artificial instruments, and even uses this as a measure of its accomplishments.
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Superstition is the poetry of life. It is inherent in man's nature; and when we think it is wholly eradicated, it takes refuge in the strangest holes and corners, whence it peeps out all at once, as soon as it can do it with safety.
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The hardest thing to see is what is in front of your eyes.
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Is not the core of nature in the heart of man?
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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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How can we learn self-knowledge? Never by taking thought but rather by action. Try to do your duty and you'll soon discover what you're like.
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The greatest difficulties lie where we are not looking for them.
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Man is made by his belief. As he believes, so he is.