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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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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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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When intelligent and sensible people despise knowledge in their old age, it is only because they have asked too much of it and of themselves.
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When ideas fail, words come in very handy.
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After fifteen minutes nobody looks at a rainbow.
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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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One cannot develop taste from what is of average quality but only from the very best.
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The older we grow, the greater become the ordeals.
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Give shape, artist! don't talk! Your poem be but a breath.
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Whatever we may say against collections, which present authors in a disjointed form, they nevertheless bring about many excellent results. We are not always so composed, so full of wisdom, that we are able to take in at once the whole scope of a work according to its merits. Do we not mark in a book passages which seem to have a direct reference to ourselves? Young people especially, who have failed in acquiring a complete cultivation of mind, are roused in a praiseworthy way by brilliant passages.
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People who think honestly and deeply have a hostile attitude towards the public.
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Who longs in solitude to live, Ah! soon his wish will gain: Men hope and love, men get and give, and leave him to his pain.
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God could cause us considerable embarrassment by revealing all the secrets of nature to us: we should not know what to do for sheer apathy and boredom.
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It is in the half fools and the half wise that the greatest danger lies.
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We rather confess our moral errors, faults, and crimes than our ignorance.
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What government is the best? That which teaches us to govern ourselves. [Ger., Welche Regierung die beste sei? Diejenige die uns lehrt uns selbst zu regieren.]
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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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Miracle is the pet child of faith.
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If you call a thing bad you do little, if you call a thing good you do much.
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Unlike grown ups, children have little need to deceive themselves.
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One can be instructed in society, one is inspired only in solitude.
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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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The arts are the salt of the earth; as salt relates to food, the arts relate to technology.