Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Quotes
-
I respect the man who knows distinctly what he wants.
-
When two men quarrel, who owns the cooler head is the more to blame.
-
The question "From where does the poet get it?" addresses only the what, nobody learns anything about the how when asking that question.
-
If you want to make life easy, make it hard.
-
One always has time enough, if one will apply it well.
-
A great artist... must be shaken by the naked truths that will not be comforted. This divine discontent, this disequilibrium, this state of inner tension is the source of artistic energy.
-
If you inquire what people are like here, I must answer, "The same as everywhere."
-
He who is and remains true to himself and to others has the most attractive quality of the greatest talent.
-
If God had wanted me otherwise, He would have created me otherwise.
-
The best benefit we derive from history is the enthusiasm it excites.
-
Any trifle is enough to entertain two lovers.
-
Whatever Nature undertakes, she can only accomplish it in a sequence. She never makes a leap.
-
Beware of dissipating your powers; strive constantly to concentrate them.
-
One can stand anything except a succession of ordinary days.
-
As great, everlasting, Adamantine laws Dictate, we must all Complete the cycles Of our existence.
-
Es gibt kein äußeres Zeichen der Höflichkeit, das nicht einen tiefen sittlichen Grund hätte. Die rechte Erziehung wäre, welche dieses Zeichen und den Grund zugleich überlieferte.
-
Someone criticized an elderly man for wooing young women. He replied that that was the only way to rejuvenation, which was, afterall, everybody's wish.
-
Against criticism a man can neither protest nor defend himself; he must act in spite of it, and then it will gradually yield to him.
-
There is no greater consolation for mediocrity than that the genius is not immortal.
-
Superstition is part of the poetry of life.
-
Man is a simple being, and however rich, varied, and unfathomable he may be, the cycle of his situations is soon run through.
-
A wife is a gift bestowed upon a man to reconcile him to the loss of paradise.
-
If you live criticizing people, you won't have time to love them.
-
When you lose interest in anything, you also lose the memory for it.