Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Quotes
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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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He who is firm in will molds the world to himself. [Ger., Aber wer fest auf dem Sinne beharrt, der bildet die Welt sich.]
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Age merely shows what children we remain.
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What is part of you, you cannot get rid of, even if you were to throw it away.
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What do people mean when they talk about unhappiness? It is not so much unhappiness as impatience that from time to time possesses men, and then they choose to call themselves miserable.
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There is but one poetry-true poetry.
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What makes poetry? A full heart, brimful of one noble passion.
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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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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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Great possessions and great want of them are both strong temptations.
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Very few people love others for what they are; rather, they love what they lend them, their own selves, their own idea of them.
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All things are only transitory.
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If ever the Divine appeared on earth, it was in the person of Christ.
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What is the universal? The single case. What is the particular? Millions of cases.
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No one would talk much in society if they knew how often they misunderstood others.
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On top of the world, or in the depths of despair.
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Only the soul that loves is happy.
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Music is so elevated that it is beyond the reach of intellect and there flows from it an influence which is all-potent, and which noone can explain.
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The church alone beyond all question Has for ill-gotten goods the right digestion.
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To accept good advice is but to increase one's own ability.
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Napoleon for the sake of a good name broke in pieces half the world.
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When the healthy nature of man acts as a whole, when he feels himself to be in the world as in a great, beautiful, noble, and valued whole, when harmonious ease affords him a pure and free delight, then the universe, if it could experience itself, would exult, as having attained its goal, and admire the climax of its own becoming and essence.
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Tis Lilith. Who? Adam's first wife is she. Beware the lure within her lovely tresses, The splendid sole adornment of her hair; When she succeeds therewith a youth to snare, Not soon again she frees him from her jesses.