Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Quotes
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He alone deserves liberty and life who daily must win them anew.
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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 eye doesn't see any shapes, it sees only what is differentiated through light and dark or through colors.
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At the end of life thoughts hitherto impossible come to the collected mind, like good spirits which let themselves down from the shining heights of the past.
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From inaccessible mountain range by way of desert untrod by human foot to the ends of the unknown seas, the breath of the everlasting creative spirit is felt, rejoicing over every speck of dust that hearkens to it and lives.
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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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Pity on the person who has become accustomed to seeing in necessity something arbitrary, who ascribes to the arbitrary some sort of reason, and even claims that following that sort of reason has religious value.
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Unrest and uncertainty are our lot.
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The soul is indestructible and its activity will continue through eternity. It is like the sun, which, to our eyes, seems to set at night; but it has in reality only gone to diffuse its light elsewhere.
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Originality provokes originality.
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We can most safely achieve truly universal tolerance when we respect that which is characteristic in the individual and in nations, clinging, though, to the conviction that the truly meritorious is unique by belonging to all of mankind.
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Oblivion is full of people who allow the opinions of others to overrule their belief in themselves.
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Nichts ist höher schätzen als der Werth des Tages.
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There speaks the man of truly noble ways, Who will not listen to the words of praise. In modesty averse, and with deaf ears, He acts as though the others were his peers.
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Let us live, while we are alive!
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Be above it! Make the world serve your purpose, but do not serve it.
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The mediator of the inexpressible is the work of art.
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Beauty is everywhere a welcome guest.
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Ill-humor is nothing more than an inward feeling of our own want of merit, a dissatisfaction with ourselves which is always united with an envy that foolish vanity excites.
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People are always talking about originality; but what do they mean? As soon as we are born, the world begins to work upon us; and this goes on to the end. And after all, what can we call our own, except energy, strength, and will? If I could give an account of all that I owe to great predecessors and contemporaries, there would be but a small balance in my favor.
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The smallest hair throws its shadow.
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Nothing is more disgusting than the majority: because it consists of a few powerful predecessors, of rogues who adapt themselves, of weak who assimilate themselves, and the masses who imitate without knowing at all what they want.
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Taste is only to be educated by contemplation, not of the tolerably good but of the truly excellent.
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True works of art are a manifestation of the higher laws of nature.