Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Quotes
-
If you are convinced of a matter, you must take sides or you don't deserve to succeed.
-
Our friends show us what we can do; our enemies teach us what we must do.
-
What is important in life is life, and not the result of life.
-
Who is sure of their own motives can in confidence advance or retreat.
-
Energy is the basis of everything. Every Jew, no matter how insignificant, is engaged in some decisive and immediate pursuit of a goal... It is the most perpetual people of the earth.
-
Your messages I hear, but faith has not been given; The dearest child of Faith is Miracle.
-
Hypotheses are lullabies for teachers to sing their students to sleep.
-
Nature does not suffer her veil to be taken from her, and what she does not choose to reveal to the spirit, thou wilt not wrest from her by levers and screws.
-
Mathematics has the completely false reputation of yielding infallible conclusions. Its infallibility is nothing but identity. Two times two is not four, but it is just two times two, and that is what we call four for short. But four is nothing new at all. And thus it goes on and on in its conclusions, except that in the higher formulas the identity fades out of sight.
-
To witness two lovers is a spectacle for the gods.
-
After all, poets shouldn't be their own interpreters and shouldn't carefully dissect their poems into everyday prose; that would mean the end of being poets. Poets send their creations into the world, it is up to the reader, the aesthetician, and the critic to determine what they wanted to say with their creations.
-
Nature is, after all, the only book that offers important content on every page.
-
A man is not little when he finds it difficult to cope with circumstances, but when circumstances overmaster him.
-
Originality provokes originality.
-
Daily life is more instructive than the most effective book.
-
True works of art contain their own theory and give us the measurement according to which we should judge them.
-
A human being needs only a small plot of ground on which to be happy, and even less to lie beneath.
-
In art it's not the thinking that does the job, but making.
-
Enthusiasm is of the greatest value, so long as we are not carried away by it.
-
As man is, so is his God. And thus is God oft strangely odd.
-
Whoever makes it a rule to test action by thought, thought by action, cannot falter, and if he does, will soon find his way back to the right road.
-
He alone deserves liberty and life who daily must win them anew.
-
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?
-
An absent friend gives us friendly company when we are well assured of his happiness.