Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Quotes
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If you live criticizing people, you won't have time to love them.
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We can offer up much in the large, but to make sacrifices in little things is what we are seldom equal to.
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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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If God had wanted me otherwise, He would have created me otherwise.
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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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The dignity of art probably appears most eminently with music since it does not have any material that needs to be discounted. Music is all form and content and elevates and ennobles everything that it expresses.
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Men are much more apt to agree in what they do than in what they think.
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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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Lose this day loitering 'Twill be the same old story, Tomorrow and the next, Even more dilatory. Whatever you would do, Or dream of doing, begin it! Boldness has power, genius, and magic in it. Begin it now.
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As great, everlasting, Adamantine laws Dictate, we must all Complete the cycles Of our existence.
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Lose the day loitering, 'twill be the same story To-morrow, and the next more dilatory, For indecision brings its own delays, And days are lost lamenting o'er lost days. Are you in earnest? Seize this very minute! What you can do, or think you can, begin it! Only engage, and then the mind grows heated; Begin it, and the work will be completed.
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People may live as much retired from the world as they please; but sooner or later, before they are aware, they will find themselves debtor or creditor to somebody.
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Nature goes her own way, and all that to us seems an exception is really according to order.
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The most damaging prejudice consists of banning any kind of investigation of nature.
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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 inquire what people are like here, I must answer, "The same as everywhere."
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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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Who is the happiest man? He who is alive to the merit of others, and can rejoice in their enjoyment as if it were his own.
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Only the soul that loves is happy.
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What sort of God would it be, who only pushed from without.
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The formation of one's character ought to be everyone's chief aim.
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There is no greater consolation for mediocrity than that the genius is not immortal.
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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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Whatever Nature undertakes, she can only accomplish it in a sequence. She never makes a leap.