Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Quotes
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I will say with Lorenzo de Medici that those who do not hope for another life are always dead to this one.
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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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The greater the knowledge, the greater the doubt.
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Yet here I stand poor fool what more, not one wit wiser than before.
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Nature is so perfect that the Trinity couldn't have fashioned her any more perfect. She is an organ on which our Lord plays and the devil works the bellows.
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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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Originality provokes originality.
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What is uttered from the heart alone, Will win the hearts of others to your own.
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Wine rejoices the heart of man and joy is the mother of all virtues.
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I don't know a greater advantage, than to appreciate the worth of an enemy.
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What is the true test of character unless it be its progressive development in the bustle and turmoil, in the action and reaction of daily life.
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Where I cannot be moral, my power is gone.
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What is important in life is life, and not the result of life.
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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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Enthusiasm is of the greatest value, so long as we are not carried away by it.
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There is nothing more fearful than imagination without taste. [Ger., Es ist nichts furchterlicher als Einbildungskraft ohne Geschmack.]
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No one is more of a slave than he who thinks himself free without being so.
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Hatred is a heavy burden. It sinks the heart deep in the breast, and lies like a tombstone on all joys.
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I think that I am better than the people who are trying to reform me.
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Of all thieves, fools are the worst; they rob you of time and temper.
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On all the peaks lies peace.
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So dear night the half of life is, And the fairest half indeed.
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At bottom, no real object is unpoetical, if the poet knows how to use it properly.