Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Quotes
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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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Go to foreign countries and you will get to know the good things one possesses at home.
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It is said, that no one is a hero to their butler. The reason is, that it requires a hero to recognize a hero. The butler, however, will probably know well how to estimate his equals.
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Doubt grows with knowledge.
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Paternity is based anyhow only upon conviction: I am convinced, therefore, I am the father.
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To live within limits. To want one thing. Or a few things very much and love them dearly. Cling to them, survey them from every angle. Become one with them - that is what makes the poet, the artist, the human being.
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Solitude is fine when you are at peace with yourself and have something definite to do.
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Girls we love for what they are; young men for what they promise to be.
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Mystery is truth's dancing partner.
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Where I cannot be moral, my power is gone.
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Every decided colour does a certain violence to the eye, and forces the organ to opposition.
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To have more, you must first be more.
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When ideas fail, words come in very handy.
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Art is constitutive-the artist determines beauty. He does not take it over.
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As in Rome there is, apart from the Romans, a population of statues, so apart from this real world there is a world of illusion, almost more potent, in which most men live.
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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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Since I have heard often enough that everyone in the end has his own religion, nothing seemed more natural to me than to fashion my own.
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Humor is one of the elements of genius--admirable as an adjunct; but as soon as it becomes dominant, only a surrogate for genius.
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The older we grow, the greater become the ordeals.
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What is important in life is life, and not the result of life.
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I think that I am better than the people who are trying to reform me.
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He who can not learn to love must flatter.
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As long as you are not aware of the continual law of Die and Be Again, you are merely a vague guest on a dark Earth.
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What am I then...? Everything that I have seen, heard, and observed I have collected and exploited. My works have been nourished by countless different individuals, by innocent and wise ones, people of intelligence and dunces. Childhood, maturity and old age all have brought me their thoughts....their perspectives on life. I have often reaped what others have sowed. My work is the work of a collective being that bears the name Goethe.