Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Quotes
-
Talent develops in quiet, alone; character is sharpened in the torrent of the world.
-
Impotent hatred is the most horrible of all emotions; one should hate nobody whom one cannot destroy.
-
The present moment is a powerful goddess.
-
One's roused by this, another finds that fit: Each loves the play for what he brings to it.
-
Commonplaceness, the surrender to the average, that good which is not bad but still the enemy of the best - That is our besetting danger.
-
There is no patriotic art and no patriotic science.
-
The mediator of the inexpressible is the work of art.
-
Nothing is more consonant with Nature than that she puts into operation in the smallest detail that which she intends as a whole.
-
If in the infinite you want to stride, Just walk in the finite to every side.
-
The loss of a much-prized treasure is only half felt when we have not regarded its tenure as secure.
-
If nature is your teacher, your soul will awaken.
-
A good man, through obscurest aspirations Has still an instinct of the one true way.
-
The true poet is called to take in the splendor of the world and for that reason will always be inclined to praise rather than tofind fault.
-
One is never satisfied with a portrait of persons whom one knows. That is why I have always pitied portraitists. One demands so seldom of others the impossible, but demands just that of the portraitists.
-
That we understand something perfectly, that we accomplish something better than anyone else around us, that is what matters.
-
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.
-
What people call the spirit of the times is mostly their own spirit in which the times mirror themselves.
-
Unlike grown ups, children have little need to deceive themselves.
-
Still this planet's soil for noble deeds grants scope abounding.
-
The misery that oppresses you lies not in your profession but in yourself! What man in the world would not find his situation intolerable if he chooses a craft, an art, indeed any form of life, without experiencing an inner calling? Whoever is born with a talent, or to a talent, must surely find in that the most pleasing of occupations! Everything on this earth has its difficult sides! Only some inner drive - pleasure, love - can help us overcome obstacles, prepare a path, and lift as out of the narrow circle in which others tread out their anguished, miserable existences!
-
What a day it is when we must envy the men in their graves.
-
He who is firm in will molds the world to himself. [Ger., Aber wer fest auf dem Sinne beharrt, der bildet die Welt sich.]
-
No doubt you are right... there would be far less suffering amongst mankind if men... did not employ their imaginations so assiduously in recalling the memory of past sorrow, instead of bearing their present lot with equanimity.
-
The words you've bandied are sufficient; 'Tis deeds that I prefer to see.