Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Quotes
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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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It makes no good to point the failures out without showing at the same time the remedy to address them.
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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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Unrest and uncertainty are our lot.
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My worthy friend, gray are all theories And green alone Life's golden tree.
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Men are so inclined to content themselves with what is commonest; the spirit and the senses so easily grow dead to the impressions of the beautiful and perfect, that every one should study, by all methods, to nourish in his mind the faculty of feeling these things. ...For this reason, one ought every day at least, to hear a little song, read a good poem, see a fine picture, and, if it were possible, to speak a few reasonable words.
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Every person above the ordinary has a certain mission that they are called to fulfill.
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The soul of the Christian religion is reverence.
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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.
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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 is better to be deceived by one's friends than to deceive them.
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When two men quarrel, who owns the cooler head is the more to blame.
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The mediator of the inexpressible is the work of art.
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Letters are among the most significant memorial a person can leave behind them.
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Let no one be like another, yet everyone like the highest. How is this done? Be each one perfect in himself.
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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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Treat people the way they are and they will stay that way. Treat people the way they can become and they will become that way.
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Everybody wants to be somebody; nobody wants to grow.
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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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Humor is one of the elements of genius--admirable as an adjunct; but as soon as it becomes dominant, only a surrogate for genius.
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The whole art of living consists in giving up existence in order to exist.
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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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There is not a single outward mark of courtesy that does not have a deep moral basis.
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Yes! to this thought I hold with firm persistence; The last result of wisdom stamps it true; He only earns his freedom and existence Who daily conquers them anew.