Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Quotes
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Science has been seriously retarded by the study of what is not worth knowing and of what is not knowable.
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The words you've bandied are sufficient; 'Tis deeds that I prefer to see.
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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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One never learns to understand truly anything but what one loves.
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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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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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It makes no good to point the failures out without showing at the same time the remedy to address them.
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Every offense is avenged on earth.
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In art it's not the thinking that does the job, but making.
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There is strong shadow where there is much light.
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The works of Lavoisier and his associates operated upon many of us at that time like the Sun's rising after a night of moonshine: but Chemistry is now betrothed to the Mathematics, and is in consequence grown somewhat shy of her former admirers.
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Do not give in too much to feelings. A overly sensitive heart is an unhappy possession on this shaky earth.
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To witness two lovers is a spectacle for the gods.
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The soul-stirring image of death is no bugbear to the sage, and is looked on without despair by the pious. It teaches the former to live, and it strengthens the hopes of the latter in salvation in the midst of distress. Death is new life to both.
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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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Pity on the person who has become accustomed to seeing in necessity something arbitrary, who ascribes to the arbitrary some sort of reason, and even claims that following that sort of reason has religious value.
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True works of art are a manifestation of the higher laws of nature.
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Since I have heard often enough that everyone in the end has his own religion, nothing seemed more natural to me than to fashion my own.
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It is ever true that he who does nothing for others, does nothing for himself.
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Of the book of books most wondrous is the tender book of love.
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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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Letters are among the most significant memorial a person can leave behind them.
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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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Enjoy when you can, and endure when you must.