Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Quotes
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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.
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Nothing is more dangerous than solitude.
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At the end of life thoughts hitherto impossible come to the collected mind, like good spirits which let themselves down from the shining heights of the past.
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There is nothing insignificant in the world. It all depends on how one looks at it.
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Being brilliant is no great feat if you respect nothing.
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What is uttered from the heart alone, Will win the hearts of others to your own.
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Wealth and speed are what the world admires, what each pursues. Railways, express mails, steamships and every possible facility for communications are the achievement in which the civilized world view and revels, only to languish in mediocrity by that very fact. Indeed, the effect of this diffusion is to spread the culture of the mediocre.
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Normally, people believe that, if they hear just words, that these words must lead to some thought.
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Great possessions and great want of them are both strong temptations.
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All things are only transitory.
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The fine emotions whence our lives we mold Lie in the earthly tumult dumb and cold.
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Those only obtain love, for the most part, who seek it not.
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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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Children, love one another, and if that is not possible-at least try to put up with one another.
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Democracy does not race, it reaches the finish slowly but surely.
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Someone criticized an elderly man for wooing young women. He replied that that was the only way to rejuvenation, which was, afterall, everybody's wish.
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I always seek the good that is in people and leave the bad to Him who made mankind and knows how to round off the corners.
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It doesn't behoove elderly persons to follow fashion in their thinking nor in the way they dress.
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Thinking is easy, acting is difficult, and to put one's thoughts into action is the most difficult thing in the world.
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Energy will do anything that can be done in this world.
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No doubt you are right... there would be far less suffering amongst mankind if men... did not employ their imaginations so assiduously in recalling the memory of past sorrow, instead of bearing their present lot with equanimity.
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There is nothing in which people more betray their character than in what they laugh at.
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The day is of infinite length for him who knows how to appreciate and use it.
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It makes no good to point the failures out without showing at the same time the remedy to address them.