Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Quotes
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Give me those days with heart in riot, The depths of bliss that touched on pain, The force of hate, and love's disquiet- Ah, give me back my youth again!
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Courage is the commitment to begin without any guarantee of success.
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A purpose you impart is no longer your own.
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I curse all negative purism that tells me not to use a word from another language that either expresses something that my own language cannot or does that in a more delicate manner.
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If you live criticizing people, you won't have time to love them.
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The wealth that cannot be administered is a burden.
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Napoleon for the sake of a good name broke in pieces half the world.
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One should not wish anyone disagreeable conditions of life; but for him who is involved in them by chance, they are touchstones of characters and of the most decisive value to man.
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Two souls dwell, alas! in my breast.
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There is a great difference, whether the poet seeks the particular for the sake of the general or sees the general in the particular. From the former procedure there ensues allegory, in which the particular serves only as illustration, as example of the general. The latter procedure, however, is genuinely the nature of poetry; it expresses something particular, without thinking of the general or pointing to it.
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In the realm of ideas everything depends on enthusiasm... in the real world all rests on perseverance.
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All that is transitory is but a metaphor.
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No one is willing to believe that adults too, like children, wander about this earth in a daze and, like children, do not know where they come from or where they are going, act as rarely as they do according to genuine motives, and are as thoroughly governed as they are by biscuits and cake and the rod.
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Beauty can never really understand itself.
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When a wife has a good husband, it is easily seen on her face.
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He who does not expect a million readers should not write a line.
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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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Love of truth shows itself in this, that a man knows how to find and value the good in everything.
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The day is for mistake and error, sequence of time for success and carrying out. The one who anticipates is master of the day.
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He who cannot love must learn to flatter.
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I must consider more closely this cycle of good and bad days which I find coursing within myself. Passion, attachment, the urge to action, inventiveness, performance, order all alternate and keep their orbit; cheerfulness, vigor, energy, flexibility and fatigue, serenity as well as desire. Nothing disturbs the cycle for I lead a simple life, but I must still find the time and order in which I rotate.
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No one knows what he is doing so long as he is acting rightly; but of what is wrong one is always conscious.
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There is no better deliverance from the world than through art, and a man can form no surer bond with it.
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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.