Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Quotes
-
One's roused by this, another finds that fit: Each loves the play for what he brings to it.
-
The best benefit we derive from history is the enthusiasm it excites.
-
Die Welt ist eine Glocke, die einen Riß hat: sie klappert, aber klingt nicht.
-
Life belongs to the living, and he who lives must be prepared for changes.
-
Limitation of aims is the mother of wisdom and the secret of achievement.
-
The eye doesn't see any shapes, it sees only what is differentiated through light and dark or through colors.
-
Our virtues and view spring from one root.
-
Every reader, if he has a strong mind, reads himself into the book, and amalgamates his thoughts with those of the author.
-
Daily life is more instructive than the most effective book.
-
God help us -- for art is long, and life so short.
-
Courage is the commitment to begin without any guarantee of success.
-
Every man bears something within him that, if it were publicly announced, would excite feelings of aversion.
-
A wife is a gift bestowed upon a man to reconcile him to the loss of paradise.
-
From inaccessible mountain range by way of desert untrod by human foot to the ends of the unknown seas, the breath of the everlasting creative spirit is felt, rejoicing over every speck of dust that hearkens to it and lives.
-
One alone does not help, but rather he who unites with many at the right moment.
-
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.
-
Any trifle is enough to entertain two lovers.
-
Old age is never honored among us, but only indulged, as childhood is; and old men lose one of the most precious rights of man,--that of being judged by their peers.
-
Very few people love others for what they are; rather, they love what they lend them, their own selves, their own idea of them.
-
Every great idea exerts, on first appearing, a tyrannical influence: Hence, the advantages it brings are turned all too soon into disadvantages.
-
Names are but noise and smoke, Obscuring heavenly light.
-
One never learns to understand truly anything but what one loves.
-
I do not now begin, - I still adore Her whom I early cherish'd in my breast; Then once again with prudence dispossess'd, And to whose heart I'm driven back once more. The love of Petrarch, that all-glorious love, Was unrequited, and, alas, full sad.
-
To tremble before anticipated evils is to bemoan what thou hast never lost.