Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Quotes
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If you are convinced of a matter, you must take sides or you don't deserve to succeed.
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Mediocrity has no greater consolation than in the thought that genius is not immortal.
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The worst is that the very hardest thinking will not bring thoughts. They must come like good children of God and cry, "Here we are." You expend effort and energy thinking hard. Then, after you have given up, they come sauntering in with their hands in their pockets. If the effort had not been made to open the door, however, who knows when they could have come.
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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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What people call the spirit of the times is mostly their own spirit in which the times mirror themselves.
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If you inquire what people are like here, I must answer, "The same as everywhere."
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To be loved for what one is, that is the greatest exception. The great majority love in others only what they lend him; their own selves, their version of him.
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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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The mediator of the inexpressible is the work of art.
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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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Just trust yourself and you'll learn the art of living.
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Higher aims are in themselves more valuable, even if unfulfilled, than lower ones quite attained.
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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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In art it's not the thinking that does the job, but making.
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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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Man's highest merit always is, as much as possible, to rule external circumstances and as little as possible to let himself be ruled by them.
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Tell me with whom you associate, and I will tell you who you are.
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A vain man can never be altogether rude. Desirous as he is of pleasing, he fashions his manners after those of others.
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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.
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The man of understanding finds everything laughable.
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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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Hatred is partial, but love is still more so.
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When toward the Devil's Hose we tread, Woman's a thousand steps behind.
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Ingratitude is always a kind of weakness. I have never known men of ability to be ungrateful.