Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Quotes
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Animals, we have been told, are taught by their organs. Yes, I would add, and so are men, but men have this further advantage that they can also teach their organs in return.
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No sacred fane requires us to submit to insult.
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Marriage is the beginning and pinnacle of civilization.
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The greatest difficulties lie where we are not looking for them.
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Stupidity is without anxiety.
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There is not a single outward mark of courtesy that does not have a deep moral basis.
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No one should be rich except those who understand it.
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Personality is everything in art and poetry.
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A phenomenon like Mozart remains an inexplicable thing.
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Were the eye not of the sun, How could we behold the light? If God's might and ours were not as one, How could His work enchant our sight?
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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.
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Can a sparrow know how a stork feels?
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People may live as much retired from the world as they please; but sooner or later, before they are aware, they will find themselves debtor or creditor to somebody.
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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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One always has time enough, if one will apply it well.
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We are our own aptest deceiver.
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In all things, to serve from the lowest station upwards is necessary. To restrict yourself to a trade is best. For the narrow mind, whatever he attempts is still a trade; for the higher, an art; and the highest in doing one thing does all, or, to speak less paradoxically, in the one thing which he does rightly he sees the likeness of all that is done rightly.
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Neither a work of nature nor one of art we get to know when they have been finished; we must surprise them in the process of beingcreated so as to understand them to some degree.
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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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There is nothing insignificant in the world. It all depends on how one looks at it.
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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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Only the soul that loves is happy.
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It will be! the mass is working clearer! Conviction gathers, truer, nearer! The mystery which for Man in Nature lies We dare to test, by knowledge led; And that which she was wont to organize We crystallize, instead.
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It is the strange fate of man, that even in the greatest of evils the fear of the worst continues to haunt him.