Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Quotes
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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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Oh God, how do the world and heavens confine themselves, when our hearts tremble in their own barriers!
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Tolerance should really be only a temporary attitude; it must lead to recognition. To tolerate means to offend.
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Don't dissipate your powers; strive to concentrate them. Genius thinks it can do whatever it sees others doing, but it will surely repent of every ill-judged outlay.
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If any man wish to write in a clear style, let him be first clear in his thoughts; and if any would write in a noble style, let him first possess a noble soul.
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Oblivion is full of people who allow the opinions of others to overrule their belief in themselves.
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Dream no small dreams for they have no power to move the hearts of men.
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Perfection is the measure of heaven, and the wish to be perfect the measure of man.
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Nature is, after all, the only book that offers important content on every page.
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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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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.
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We don't get to know anything but what we love.
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What a day it is when we must envy the men in their graves.
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I am part of the part that once was everything, Part of the darkness which gave birth to light… Mephistopheles, from Faust.
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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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To quit smoking, you must first want to quit, but then you must also do the quitting.
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The aim of living is life itself.
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The really unhappy person is the one who leaves undone what they can do, and starts doing what they don't understand; no wonder they come to grief.
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Energy will do anything that can be done in the world; and no talents, no circumstances, no opportunities will make a two-legged animal a man without it.
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It is bad governments, not bad people, who cause revolutions.
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To live in a great idea means to treat the impossible as though it were possible. It is just the same with a strong character; and when an idea and a character meet, things arise which fill the world with wonder for thousands of years.
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As man is, so is his God. And thus is God oft strangely odd.
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We are not all equal, nor can we be so.
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Those who hope for no other life are dead even for this.