Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Quotes
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Let no one be like another, yet everyone like the highest. How is this done? Be each one perfect in himself.
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Thus one can observe that those who proclaim piety as their goal and purpose usually turn into hypocrites.
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It is the color closest to light. In its utmost purity it always implies the nature of brightness and has a cheerful, serene, gently stimulating character. Hence, experience teaches us that yellow makes a thoroughly warm and comforting impression.
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The solution of every problem is another problem.
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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.
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And I have again observed, my dear friend, in this trifling affair, that misunderstandings and neglect occasion more mischief in the world than even malice and wickedness. At all events, the two latter are of less frequent occurrence.
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Originality provokes originality.
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No one is more of a slave than he who thinks himself free without being so.
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Cursed Mammon be, when he with treasures To restless action spurs our fate! Cursed when for soft, indulgent leisures, He lays for us the pillows straight.
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The greater the knowledge, the greater the doubt.
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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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It is sometimes essential for a husband and a wife to quarrel - they get to know each other better.
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How can we know ourselves? Never by reflection, but only through action. Begin at once to do your duty and immediately you will know what is inside you.
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Time is a strange thing. It is a whimsical tyrant, which in every century has a different face for all that one says and does.
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Give shape, artist! don't talk! Your poem be but a breath.
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Enthusiasm is of the greatest value, so long as we are not carried away by it.
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A man must cling to the belief that the incomprehensible is comprehensible; otherwise he would not try to fathom it.
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Secrecy has many advantages, for when you tell someone the purpose of any object right away, they often think there is nothing to it.
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Sometimes our fate resembles a fruit tree in winter. Who would think that those branches would turn green again and blossom, but we hope it, we know it.
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Tolerance comes of age. I see no fault committed that I myself could not have committed at some time or other.
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The senses do not deceive us, but the judgment does.
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Not the maker of plans and promises, but rather the one who offers faithful service in small matters. This is the person who is most likely to achieve what is good and lasting.
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We eagerly get hold of a law that serves as a weapon to our passions.
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Every bird has its decoy, and every man is led and misled in his own peculiar way.