Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Quotes
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All one needs to do is declare oneself free and one will immediately feel dependent. If you dare to declare yourself dependent, you feel independent.
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We cannot and must not get rid of nor deny our characteristics. But we can give them shape and direction.
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No one should be rich except those who understand it.
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If you have a great work in your head, nothing else thrives near it; all other thoughts are repelled, and the pleasure of life itself is for the time lost.
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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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I make presents to the mother but think of the daughter.
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What I possess I would gladly retain. Change amuses the mind, yet scarcely profits.
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The trouble is small, the fun is great.
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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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For the butterfly, mating and propagation involve the sacrifice of life, for the human being, the sacrifice of beauty.
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The whole art of living consists in giving up existence in order to exist.
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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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Some books seem to have been written, not to teach us anything, but to let us know that the author has known something.
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The soul is indestructible and its activity will continue through eternity. It is like the sun, which, to our eyes, seems to set at night; but it has in reality only gone to diffuse its light elsewhere.
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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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He who is plenteously provided for from within needs but little from without.
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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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The spirit from which we act is the principal matter.
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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.
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Some of our weaknesses are born in us, others are the result of education; it is a question which of the two gives us most trouble.
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A phenomenon like Mozart remains an inexplicable thing.
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If you lay duties upon people and give them no rights, you must pay them well.
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Theories are usually the over-hasty efforts of an impatient understanding that would gladly be rid of phenomena, and so puts in their place pictures, notions, nay, often mere words.
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The smallest hair throws its shadow.