Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Quotes
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No one has ever learned fully to know themselves.
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To be sure, we have inherited abilities, but our development we owe to thousands of influences coming from the world around us from which we appropriate what we can and what is suitable to us.
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He who cannot love must learn to flatter.
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Everything perfect in its kind has to transcend its own kind, it must become something different and incomparable. In some notes the nightingale is still a bird; then it rises above its class and seems to suggest to every winged creature what singing is truly like.
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As for solitude, I cannot understand how certain people seek to lay claim to intellectual stature, nobility of soul and strength of character, yet have not the slightest feeling for seclusion; for solitude, I maintain, when joined with a quiet contemplation of nature, a serene and conscious faith in creation and the Creator, and a few vexations from outside is the only school for a mind of lofty endowment.
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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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All is born of water; all is sustained by water.
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What is the path? There is no path. On into the unknown.
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We love a girl for very different qualities than understanding. We love her for her beauty, her youth, her mirth, her confidingness, her character, with its faults, caprices and God knows what other inexpressible charms; but we do not love her understanding.
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If all these devils really exist it proves there must be angels, too.
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The happiest man is the one who finds happiness at home.
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One always has time enough, if one will apply it well.
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Let's plunge ourselves into the roar of time, the whirl of accident; may pain and pleasure, success and failure, shift as they will -- it's only action that can make a man.
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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.
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The Evil One has left, the evil ones remain.
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When two men quarrel, who owns the cooler head is the more to blame.
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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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He who possesses science and art, Possesses religion as well; He who possesses neither of these, Had better have religion.
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To accept good advice is but to increase one's own ability.
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Nothing is more dangerous than solitude.
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Unrest and uncertainty are our lot.
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Begin by instructing yourself, then you will receive instruction from others.
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God help us -- for art is long, and life so short.
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When a wife has a good husband, it is easily seen on her face.