Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Quotes
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Mastery is often taken for egotism.
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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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If nature is your teacher, your soul will awaken.
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Is it life, I ask, is it even prudence, To bore thyself and bore the students?
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When two men quarrel, who owns the cooler head is the more to blame.
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Take life too seriously, and what is it worth? If the morning wake us to no new joys, if the evening bring us not the hopes of new pleasures, is it worth while to dress and undress? Does the sun shine on me today that I may reflect on yesterday? That I may endeavor to foresee and control what can neither be foreseen nor controlled - the destiny of tomorrow?
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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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The present moment is a powerful goddess.
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He alone deserves liberty and life who daily must win them anew.
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Yes! to this thought I hold with firm persistence; The last result of wisdom stamps it true; He only earns his freedom and existence Who daily conquers them anew.
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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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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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Normally, people believe that, if they hear just words, that these words must lead to some thought.
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No two people see the world exactly alike, and different temperaments will often apply the same principle, recognized by both, differently. Even one and the same person won't always maintain the same views and judgments: earlier convictions must give way to later ones.
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The loss of a much-prized treasure is only half felt when we have not regarded its tenure as secure.
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What I possess I would gladly retain. Change amuses the mind, yet scarcely profits.
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I have always paid attention to the merits of my enemies, and found it an advantage.
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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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Everyone believes in his youth that the world really began with him, and that all merely exists for his sake.
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The history of mankind is his character.
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All theory, my friend, is grey, But green is life's glad golden tree.
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The people rate strength before everything.
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I believe in God and in nature and in the triumph of good over evil.