Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Quotes
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Every offense is avenged on earth.
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Could we perfect human nature, we might also expect a perfect state of things.
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Enjoy when you can, and endure when you must.
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Of the book of books most wondrous is the tender book of love.
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Oh God, how do the world and heavens confine themselves, when our hearts tremble in their own barriers!
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There is strong shadow where there is much light.
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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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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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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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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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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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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.
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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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One never learns to understand truly anything but what one loves.
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Who is sure of their own motives can in confidence advance or retreat.
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Every bird has its decoy, and every man is led and misled in his own peculiar way.
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It is ever true that he who does nothing for others, does nothing for himself.
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To witness two lovers is a spectacle for the gods.
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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 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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Beauty is everywhere a welcome guest.
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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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Nature knows no pause in progress and development, and attaches her curse on all inaction.
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A flippant, frivolous man may ridicule others, may controvert them, scorn them; but he who has any respect for himself seems to have renounced the right of thinking meanly of others.