Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Quotes
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What is the path? There is no path. On into the unknown.
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The eye doesn't see any shapes, it sees only what is differentiated through light and dark or through colors.
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If nature is your teacher, your soul will awaken.
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Mankind? That is an abstraction. There have always been and always will be only individuals.
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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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To every one Nature appears in a form of his own. She hides herself in a thousand names and terms, and is always the same.
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When ideas fail, words come in very handy.
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Old age is never honored among us, but only indulged, as childhood is; and old men lose one of the most precious rights of man,--that of being judged by their peers.
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A human being needs only a small plot of ground on which to be happy, and even less to lie beneath.
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The way you see people is the way you treat them, and the way you treat them is what they become.
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Everywhere, we learn only from those whom we love.
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I make presents to the mother but think of the daughter.
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Hope enough to remove all anxious fears concerning the future.
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Only that type of story deserves to be called moral that shows us that one has the power within oneself to act, out of the conviction that there is something better, even against one's own inclination.
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Girls we love for what they are; young men for what they promise to be.
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At bottom, no real object is unpoetical, if the poet knows how to use it properly.
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Every bird has its decoy, and every man is led and misled in his own peculiar way.
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The hardest thing to see is what is in front of your eyes.
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Oh God, how do the world and heavens confine themselves, when our hearts tremble in their own barriers!
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To live in a great idea means to treat the impossible as though it were possible. It is just the same with a strong character; and when an idea and a character meet, things arise which fill the world with wonder for thousands of years.
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What government is the best? That which teaches us to govern ourselves. [Ger., Welche Regierung die beste sei? Diejenige die uns lehrt uns selbst zu regieren.]
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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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There are but few who have ideas and are, at the same time, capable of action. Ideas enlarge but stymie, action enlivens but confines.
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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.