Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Quotes
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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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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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Treat people as if they were what they ought to be and you help them to become what they are capable of being.
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A life without love, without the presence of the beloved, is nothing but a mere magic-lantern show. We draw out slide after slide, swiftly tiring of each, and pushing it back to make haste for the next.
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To witness two lovers is a spectacle for the gods.
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It is better for you to suffer an injustice than for the world to be without law. Therefore, let everyone submit to the law.
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Pain and pleasure, good and evil, come to us from unexpected sources. It is not there where we have gathered up our brightest hopes, that the dawn of happiness breaks. It is not there where we have glanced our eye with affright, that we find the deadliest gloom. What should this teach us? To bow to the great and only Source of light, and live humbly and with confiding resignation.
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You can put up with everything in this world except not with a long stretch of beautiful days.
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Those that are firm in their will mold the world to themselves.
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If your treat an individual... as if he were what he ought to be and could be, he will become what he ought to be and could be.
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It is natural to man to regard himself as the final cause of creation.
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It is equally a mistake to hold one's self too high, or to rate one's self too cheap.
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To know where a thing is we must have found it.
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Austere perseverance, hash and continuous... rarely fails of its purpose, for its silent power grows irresistible greater with time.
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But the valid issue is the extent to which man knows how to form and master the material at his command.
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He only earns his freedom and his life Who takes them every day by storm.
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I have always paid attention to the merits of my enemies, and found it an advantage.
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Names are but noise and smoke, Obscuring heavenly light.
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Idea and experience will never coincide in the center; only through art and action are they united.
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I hate all bungling as I do sin, but particularly bungling in politics, which leads to the misery and ruin of many thousands and millions of people.
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The best government is that which teaches us to govern ourselves.
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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.
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We cannot and must not get rid of nor deny our characteristics. But we can give them shape and direction.
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No one can take from us the joy of the first becoming aware of something, the so-called discovery. But if we also demand the honor, it can be utterly spoiled for us, for we are usually not the first. What does discovery mean, and who can say that he has discovered this or that? After all it's pure idiocy to brag about priority; for it's simply unconscious conceit, not to admit frankly that one is a plagiarist.