Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Quotes
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Still this planet's soil for noble deeds grants scope abounding.
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It would not be worth your while to reach the age of seventy if all the wisdom of the world were to be foolishness before God.
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What do people mean when they talk about unhappiness? It is not so much unhappiness as impatience that from time to time possesses men, and then they choose to call themselves miserable.
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One's roused by this, another finds that fit: Each loves the play for what he brings to it.
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It would be a lowly art that allowed itself to be understood all at once.
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Everywhere, we learn only from those whom we love.
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When ideas fail, words come in very handy.
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The present moment is a powerful goddess.
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A good man, through obscurest aspirations Has still an instinct of the one true way.
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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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In politics people throw themselves, as on a sickbed, from one side to the other in the belief they will lie more comfortably.
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What a day it is when we must envy the men in their graves.
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So dear night the half of life is, And the fairest half indeed.
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Unlike grown ups, children have little need to deceive themselves.
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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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The mediator of the inexpressible is the work of art.
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Girls we love for what they are; young men for what they promise to be.
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If in the infinite you want to stride, Just walk in the finite to every side.
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God made man simple, but how he changed and got complicated is hard to say.
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Our destiny often looks like a fruit-tree in winter. Who would think from its pitiable aspect that those rigid boughs, those rough twigs could next spring again be green, bloom, and even bear fruit? Yet we hope it, we know it.
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Everybody wants to be somebody; nobody wants to grow.
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No one is more of a slave than he who thinks himself free without being so.
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That we understand something perfectly, that we accomplish something better than anyone else around us, that is what matters.
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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!