Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Quotes
-
Science has been seriously retarded by the study of what is not worth knowing and of what is not knowable.
-
Do not give in too much to feelings. A overly sensitive heart is an unhappy possession on this shaky earth.
-
The soul is indestructible and its activity will continue through eternity. It is like the sun, which, to our eyes, seems to set at night; but it has in reality only gone to diffuse its light elsewhere.
-
A human being needs only a small plot of ground on which to be happy, and even less to lie beneath.
-
Nothing is worth more than this day. You cannot relive yesterday. Tomorrow is still beyond your reach.
-
By nature we have no defect that could not become a strength, no strength that could not become a defect.
-
There are but few who have ideas and are, at the same time, capable of action. Ideas enlarge but stymie, action enlivens but confines.
-
The history of mankind is his character.
-
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?
-
Let no one be like another, yet everyone like the highest. How is this done? Be each one perfect in himself.
-
The greater the knowledge, the greater the doubt.
-
Enthusiasm is of the greatest value, so long as we are not carried away by it.
-
Mastery is often taken for egotism.
-
The solution of every problem is another problem.
-
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.
-
Our friends show us what we can do; our enemies teach us what we must do.
-
Girls we love for what they are; young men for what they promise to be.
-
We lay aside letters never to read them again, and at last we destroy them out discretion, and so disappears the most immediate breath of life, irrecoverably for ourselves and for others.
-
The people rate strength before everything.
-
A stated truth loses its grace, but a repeated error appears insipid and ridiculous.
-
He is dead in this world who has no belief in another.
-
No one is more of a slave than he who thinks himself free without being so.
-
Energy will do anything that can be done in this world.
-
He alone deserves liberty and life who daily must win them anew.