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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The solution of every problem is another problem.
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I have come to the frightening conclusion that I am the decisive element. It is my personal approach that creates the climate.
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The older we grow, the greater become the ordeals.
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The hardest thing to see is what is in front of your eyes.
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The true poet is called to take in the splendor of the world and for that reason will always be inclined to praise rather than tofind fault.
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Be above it! Make the world serve your purpose, but do not serve it.
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On all the peaks lies peace.
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You don't have to travel around the world to understand that the sky is blue everywhere.
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Just trust yourself and you'll learn the art of living.
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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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Energy will do anything that can be done in this world.
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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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The present moment is a powerful goddess.
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Impotent hatred is the most horrible of all emotions; one should hate nobody whom one cannot destroy.
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Willing is not enough, we must do.
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Commonplaceness, the surrender to the average, that good which is not bad but still the enemy of the best - That is our besetting danger.
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It doesn't behoove elderly persons to follow fashion in their thinking nor in the way they dress.
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True love is love that stays constant for ever, whatever it's fortune; whether requited or scored, filled or sent empty away.
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Taste is only to be educated by contemplation, not of the tolerably good but of the truly excellent.
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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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All professional men are handicapped by not being allowed to ignore things which are useless.
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Every idea appears at first as a strange visitor, and when it begins to be realized, it is hardly distinguishable from fantasy.
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God could cause us considerable embarrassment by revealing all the secrets of nature to us: we should not know what to do for sheer apathy and boredom.