Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Quotes
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Our friends show us what we can do; our enemies teach us what we must do.
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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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Life is the childhood of our immortality.
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Be generous with kindly words, especially about those who are absent.
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If you are convinced of a matter, you must take sides or you don't deserve to succeed.
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There speaks the man of truly noble ways, Who will not listen to the words of praise. In modesty averse, and with deaf ears, He acts as though the others were his peers.
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A plant is like a self-willed man, out of whom we can obtain all which we desire, if we will only treat him his own way.
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Dream no small dreams for they have no power to move the hearts of men.
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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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The present moment is a powerful goddess.
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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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The people rate strength before everything.
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When you take a man as he is, you make him worse. When you take a man as he can be, you make him better.
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Give shape, artist! don't talk! Your poem be but a breath.
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Let us live, while we are alive!
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Nothing is more consonant with Nature than that she puts into operation in the smallest detail that which she intends as a whole.
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Mankind? That is an abstraction. There have always been and always will be only individuals.
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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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Art is constitutive-the artist determines beauty. He does not take it over.
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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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I think that I am better than the people who are trying to reform me.
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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.
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Continue to make the demands of the day your immediate concern, and take occasion to test the purity of your hearts and the steadfastness of your spirits. When you then take a deep breath and rise above the cares of this world and in an hour of leisure, you will surely win the proper frame of mind to face devoutly what is above us, with reverence, seeing in all events the manifestation of a higher guidance.
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Oblivion is full of people who allow the opinions of others to overrule their belief in themselves.