Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Quotes
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The words you've bandied are sufficient; 'Tis deeds that I prefer to see.
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Hatred is partial, but love is still more so.
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And what does really matter? That is easy: thinking and doing, doing and thinking--and these are the sum of all wisdom. . . . Both must move ever onward in life, to and fro, like breathing in and breathing out.
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A wife is a gift bestowed upon a man to reconcile him to the loss of paradise.
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Courage is the commitment to begin without any guarantee of success.
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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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Great thoughts and a pure heart, that is what we should ask from God.
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Fortunately, we can take in only so much misfortune; what exceeds that limit either destroys us or leaves us indifferent.
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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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No limit, no definition, may restrict the range or depth of the human spirit's passage into its own secrets or the world's.
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Energy will do anything that can be done in this world.
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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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As long as you don't practice it, this dying and becoming, You are only a dreary guest on this dark earth.
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Duration in change.
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Hope enough to remove all anxious fears concerning the future.
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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!
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Misunderstandings and neglect create more confusion in this world than trickery and malice. At any rate, the last two are certainly much less frequent.
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When two men quarrel, who owns the cooler head is the more to blame.
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Two souls dwell, alas! in my breast.
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Impotent hatred is the most horrible of all emotions; one should hate nobody whom one cannot destroy.
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Analysis and synthesis are both as necessary to the thinking spirit as inspiration and expiration to the organism.
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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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A good man, through obscurest aspirations Has still an instinct of the one true way.
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And we went our separate ways without having understood each other. As in this world nobody understands the other easily.