Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Quotes
-
Reason can never be popular. Passions and feelings may become popular, but reason will always remain the sole property of a few eminent individuals.
-
Great possessions and great want of them are both strong temptations.
-
The misery that oppresses you lies not in your profession but in yourself! What man in the world would not find his situation intolerable if he chooses a craft, an art, indeed any form of life, without experiencing an inner calling? Whoever is born with a talent, or to a talent, must surely find in that the most pleasing of occupations! Everything on this earth has its difficult sides! Only some inner drive - pleasure, love - can help us overcome obstacles, prepare a path, and lift as out of the narrow circle in which others tread out their anguished, miserable existences!
-
If you want to reach the infinite, then explore every aspect of the finite.
-
One can stand anything except a succession of ordinary days.
-
He who does not see the whole world in his friends, does not deserve that the world should hear of him.
-
The best benefit we derive from history is the enthusiasm it excites.
-
No one feels himself easy in a garden which does not look like the open country.
-
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.
-
Nature goes her own way, and all that to us seems an exception is really according to order.
-
One never learns to understand truly anything but what one loves.
-
Generosity wins favour for everyone, especially when it is accompanied by modesty.
-
We blame equally him who is too proud to put a proper value on his own merit and him who prizes too highly his spurious worth.
-
Music is so elevated that it is beyond the reach of intellect and there flows from it an influence which is all-potent, and which noone can explain.
-
The most fortunate of men, Be he a king or commoner, is he Whose welfare is assured in his own home.
-
What people call the spirit of the times is mostly their own spirit in which the times mirror themselves.
-
For that is love's nature that it lays claim to exclusive right and that all other claims are nil.
-
The words you've bandied are sufficient; 'Tis deeds that I prefer to see.
-
In politics people throw themselves, as on a sickbed, from one side to the other in the belief they will lie more comfortably.
-
The use of a thing is only a part of its significance. To know anything thoroughly, to have the full command of it in all its appliances, we must study it on its own account, independently of any special application.
-
Names are but noise and smoke, Obscuring heavenly light.
-
Man is a simple being, and however rich, varied, and unfathomable he may be, the cycle of his situations is soon run through.
-
He who is and remains true to himself and to others has the most attractive quality of the greatest talent.
-
As soon as you are in a social setting, you better take away the key to the lock of your heart and pocket it; those who leave thekey in the lock are fools.