Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Quotes
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Where I cannot be moral, my power is gone.
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Unlike grown ups, children have little need to deceive themselves.
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Mankind? That is an abstraction. There have always been and always will be only individuals.
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Wine rejoices the heart of man and joy is the mother of all virtues.
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He alone deserves liberty and life who daily must win them anew.
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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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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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You can’t, if you can’t feel it, if it never Rises from the soul, and sways The heart of every single hearer, With deepest power, in simple ways. You’ll sit forever, gluing things together, Cooking up a stew from other’s scraps, Blowing on a miserable fire, Made from your heap of dying ash. Let apes and children praise your art, If their admiration’s to your taste, But you’ll never speak from heart to heart, Unless it rises up from your heart’s space.
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The world is full of contradiction.
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Taste is only to be educated by contemplation, not of the tolerably good but of the truly excellent.
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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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Your messages I hear, but faith has not been given; The dearest child of Faith is Miracle.
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Every day look at a beautiful picture, read a beautiful poem, listen to some beautiful music, and if possible, say some reasonable thing.
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Our destiny often looks like a fruit-tree in winter. Who would think from its pitiable aspect that those rigid boughs, those rough twigs could next spring again be green, bloom, and even bear fruit? Yet we hope it, we know it.
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In art, the best is good enough.
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As man is, so is his God. And thus is God oft strangely odd.
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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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Don't say that you want to give, but go ahead and give! You'll never catch up with a mere hope.
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Art is constitutive-the artist determines beauty. He does not take it over.
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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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What a day it is when we must envy the men in their graves.
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Men's prejudices rest upon their character for the time being and cannot be overcome, as being part and parcel of themselves. Neither evidence nor common sense nor reason has the slightest influence upon them.
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So much has already been said about Shakespeare that there doesn't seem to be anything more to say; yet it is the quality of the spirit that it forever stimulates the spirit.
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Nature is, after all, the only book that offers important content on every page.