Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Quotes
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What makes poetry? A full heart, brimful of one noble passion.
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The mediator of the inexpressible is the work of art.
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The safest thing is always to try to convert everything that is in us and around us into action; let the others talk and argue about it as they please.
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Superstition is the poetry of life. It is inherent in man's nature; and when we think it is wholly eradicated, it takes refuge in the strangest holes and corners, whence it peeps out all at once, as soon as it can do it with safety.
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There are two things parents should give their children roots and wings. Roots to give them bearing and a sense of belonging, but also wings to help free them from constraints and prejudices and give them other ways to travel (or rather, to fly).
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All things are only transitory.
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Could we perfect human nature, we might also expect a perfect state of things.
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Destiny grants us our wishes, but in its own way, in order to give us something beyond our wishes.
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When two men quarrel, who owns the cooler head is the more to blame.
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Die Welt ist eine Glocke, die einen Riß hat: sie klappert, aber klingt nicht.
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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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Mankind? That is an abstraction. There have always been and always will be only individuals.
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Animals, we have been told, are taught by their organs. Yes, I would add, and so are men, but men have this further advantage that they can also teach their organs in return.
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Originality provokes originality.
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The words you've bandied are sufficient; 'Tis deeds that I prefer to see.
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If I say to the moment: 'Stay now! You are so beautiful'!
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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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Create, artist, do not talk.
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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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Nichts ist höher schätzen als der Werth des Tages.
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He alone deserves liberty and life who daily must win them anew.
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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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The arts are the salt of the earth; as salt relates to food, the arts relate to technology.
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It is better to be deceived by one's friends than to deceive them.