Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Quotes
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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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Girls we love for what they are; young men for what they promise to be.
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No one is more of a slave than he who thinks himself free without being so.
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Enthusiasm is of the greatest value, so long as we are not carried away by it.
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When we treat man as he is, we make him worse than he is; when we treat him as if he already were what he potentially could be, we make him what he should be.
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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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Know'st thou yesterday, its aim and reason? Work'st thou will today for worthier things? Then calmly wait the morrow's hidden season, And fear thou not, what hap soe'er it brings.
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Time is a strange thing. It is a whimsical tyrant, which in every century has a different face for all that one says and does.
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When an idea is wanting, a word can always be found to take its place.
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Everybody wants to be somebody; nobody wants to grow.
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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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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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God made man simple, but how he changed and got complicated is hard to say.
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And what does really matter? That is easy: thinking and doing, doing and thinking--and these are the sum of all wisdom. . . . Both must move ever onward in life, to and fro, like breathing in and breathing out.
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So dear night the half of life is, And the fairest half indeed.
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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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The hardest thing to see is what is in front of your eyes.
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By nature we have no defect that could not become a strength, no strength that could not become a defect.
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Mathematics can remove no prejudices and soften no obduracy. It has no influence in sweetening the bitter strife of parties, and in the moral world generally its action is perfectly null.
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Normally, people believe that, if they hear just words, that these words must lead to some thought.
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Mathematics has the completely false reputation of yielding infallible conclusions. Its infallibility is nothing but identity. Two times two is not four, but it is just two times two, and that is what we call four for short. But four is nothing new at all. And thus it goes on and on in its conclusions, except that in the higher formulas the identity fades out of sight.
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Energy will do anything that can be done in this world.
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By seeking and blundering we learn.
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True works of art are a manifestation of the higher laws of nature.