Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Quotes
-
It is ever true that he who does nothing for others, does nothing for himself.
-
If one has not read the newspapers for some months and then reads them all together, one sees, as one never saw before, how much time is wasted with this kind of literature.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
Don't say that you want to give, but go ahead and give! You'll never catch up with a mere hope.
-
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.
-
But the valid issue is the extent to which man knows how to form and master the material at his command.
-
Austere perseverance, hash and continuous... rarely fails of its purpose, for its silent power grows irresistible greater with time.
-
Objects in pictures should so be arranged as by their very position to tell their own story.
-
Man knows himself only insofar as he knows the world, becoming aware of it if only within himself, and of himself self only within it. Each new subject, well observed, opens up within us a new organ of thought.
-
Treat people as if they were what they ought to be and you help them to become what they are capable of being.
-
No limit, no definition, may restrict the range or depth of the human spirit's passage into its own secrets or the world's.
-
While man's desires and aspirations stir he cannot choose but err.
-
It is equally a mistake to hold one's self too high, or to rate one's self too cheap.
-
Humans fear reason, but they ought to fear stupidity- for reason can be hard, but stupidity can be fatal.
-
The artist has a twofold relation to nature; he is at once her master and her slave.
-
Nothing puts me so completely out of patience as the utterance of a wretched commonplace when I am talking from my inmost heart.
-
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.
-
To witness two lovers is a spectacle for the gods.
-
It is natural to man to regard himself as the final cause of creation.
-
Love, whose power youth feels, is not suitable for the elderly, just as little as anything that presupposes productivity. It is rare that productivity lasts through the years.
-
Sometimes our fate resembles a fruit tree in winter. Who would think that those branches would turn green again and blossom, but we hope it, we know it.
-
The best government is that which teaches us to govern ourselves.