Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Quotes
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I wish the stage were as narrow as the wire of a tighrope dancer so that no incompetent would dare step upon it.
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Great possessions and great want of them are both strong temptations.
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And I have again observed, my dear friend, in this trifling affair, that misunderstandings and neglect occasion more mischief in the world than even malice and wickedness. At all events, the two latter are of less frequent occurrence.
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It is a misfortune to pass at once from observation to conclusion, and to regard both as of equal value; but it befalls many a student.
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Napoleon for the sake of a good name broke in pieces half the world.
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We lay aside letters never to read them again, and at last we destroy them out discretion, and so disappears the most immediate breath of life, irrecoverably for ourselves and for others.
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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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It is sometimes essential for a husband and a wife to quarrel - they get to know each other better.
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Limitation of aims is the mother of wisdom and the secret of achievement.
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Thus one can observe that those who proclaim piety as their goal and purpose usually turn into hypocrites.
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Truth is a torch but a tremendous one. That is why we hurry past it, shielding our eyes, indeed, in fear of getting burned.
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Hope enough to remove all anxious fears concerning the future.
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Every second is of infinite value.
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The soul of the Christian religion is reverence.
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What is the universal? The single case. What is the particular? Millions of cases.
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Thinking is more interesting than knowing, but less interesting than looking.
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And we went our separate ways without having understood each other. As in this world nobody understands the other easily.
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Presents at once? That's good. He is sure to succeed.
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There is nothing in which people more betray their character than in what they laugh at.
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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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A person hears only what they understand.
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All things are only transitory.
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Ingratitude is always a kind of weakness. I have never known men of ability to be ungrateful.
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To be sure, a good work of art can and will have moral consequences, but to demand of the artists moral intentions, means ruiningtheir craft.