Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Quotes
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Let there be truth between us.
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He is the happiest man who can see the connection between the end and the beginning of life.
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People who think honestly and deeply have a hostile attitude towards the public.
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Nothing tells more about the character of a man than the things he makes fun of.
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The arts are the salt of the earth; as salt relates to food, the arts relate to technology.
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The misery that oppresses you lies not in your profession but in yourself! What man in the world would not find his situation intolerable if he chooses a craft, an art, indeed any form of life, without experiencing an inner calling? Whoever is born with a talent, or to a talent, must surely find in that the most pleasing of occupations! Everything on this earth has its difficult sides! Only some inner drive - pleasure, love - can help us overcome obstacles, prepare a path, and lift as out of the narrow circle in which others tread out their anguished, miserable existences!
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Our friends show us what we can do; our enemies teach us what we must do.
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There are but few who have ideas and are, at the same time, capable of action. Ideas enlarge but stymie, action enlivens but confines.
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Reality surpasses imagination; and we see, breathing, brightening, and moving before our eyes sights dearer to our hearts than any we ever beheld in the land of sleep.
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Man is a simple being, and however rich, varied, and unfathomable he may be, the cycle of his situations is soon run through.
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Very few people love others for what they are; rather, they love what they lend them, their own selves, their own idea of them.
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If you wish to know the mind of a man, listen to his words.
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We are not all equal, nor can we be so.
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Mastery is often taken for egotism.
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Where a man has a passion for meditating without the capacity of thinking, a particular idea fixes itself fast, and soon creates a mental disease.
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No one is more of a slave than he who thinks himself free without being so.
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In art it's not the thinking that does the job, but making.
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The world is full of contradiction.
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One doesn't always lose when one has to do without.
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What people call the spirit of the times is mostly their own spirit in which the times mirror themselves.
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Hypotheses are lullabies for teachers to sing their students to sleep.
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Mere curiosity adds wings to every step.
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A man is not little when he finds it difficult to cope with circumstances, but when circumstances overmaster him.
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He is dead in this world who has no belief in another.