Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Quotes
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Flowers are the beautiful hieroglyphics of nature with which she indicates how much she loves us.
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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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What is uttered from the heart alone, Will win the hearts of others to your own.
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Analysis and synthesis are both as necessary to the thinking spirit as inspiration and expiration to the organism.
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The most damaging prejudice consists of banning any kind of investigation of nature.
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A stated truth loses its grace, but a repeated error appears insipid and ridiculous.
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There are but few who have ideas and are, at the same time, capable of action. Ideas enlarge but stymie, action enlivens but confines.
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We love a girl for very different qualities than understanding. We love her for her beauty, her youth, her mirth, her confidingness, her character, with its faults, caprices and God knows what other inexpressible charms; but we do not love her understanding.
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Don't feel guilty if you don't immediately love your stepchildren as you do your own, or as much as you think you should. Everyoneneeds time to adjust to the new family, adults included. There is no such thing as an "instant parent." Actually, no concrete object lies outside of the poetic sphere as long as the poet knows how to use the object properly.
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Faith is hidden household capital.
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Tis Lilith. Who? Adam's first wife is she. Beware the lure within her lovely tresses, The splendid sole adornment of her hair; When she succeeds therewith a youth to snare, Not soon again she frees him from her jesses.
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Artists have a double relationship towards nature: they are her master and her slave at the same time. They are her slave in so far as they must work with means of this world so as to be understood; her master in so far as they subject these means to their higher goals and make them subservient to them.
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The present moment is a powerful goddess.
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If a poet would work politically, he must give himself up to a party; and so soon as he does that, he is lost as a poet.
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Over all the mountain tops is peace.
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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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As in Rome there is, apart from the Romans, a population of statues, so apart from this real world there is a world of illusion, almost more potent, in which most men live.
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Every person above the ordinary has a certain mission that they are called to fulfill.
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A man is not little when he finds it difficult to cope with circumstances, but when circumstances overmaster him.
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Girls we love for what they are; young men for what they promise to be.
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Tolerance should, strictly speaking, be only a passing mood; it ought to lead to acknowledgment and appreciation. To tolerate a person is to affront him.
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One doesn't always lose when one has to do without.
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I will say with Lorenzo de Medici that those who do not hope for another life are always dead to this one.
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We are surrounded by abysses, but the greatest of all depths is in our own heart, and an irresistible leaning leads us there. Draw thyself from thyself!