Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Quotes
-
I have always paid attention to the merits of my enemies, and found it an advantage.
-
The best government is that which teaches us to govern ourselves.
-
The greatest thing in this world is not so much where we stand as in what direction we are moving.
-
He is a man whom it is impossible to please, because he is never pleased with himself.
-
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.
-
It is bad governments, not bad people, who cause revolutions.
-
I have come to the frightening conclusion that I am the decisive element. It is my personal approach that creates the climate.
-
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.
-
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.
-
I have found among my papers a sheet . . . in which I call architecture frozen music.
-
To be loved for what one is, that is the greatest exception. The great majority love in others only what they lend him; their own selves, their version of him.
-
Science has been seriously retarded by the study of what is not worth knowing and of what is not knowable.
-
It is equally a mistake to hold one's self too high, or to rate one's self too cheap.
-
Oral delivery aims at persuasion and making the listener believe they are converted. Few persons are capable of being convinced the majority allow themselves to be persuaded.
-
The assault of our enemies is not part of our life; it is only part of our experience; we throw it off and guard ourselves against it as against frost, storm, rain, hail, or any other of the external evils which may be expected to happen.
-
People should talk less and draw more. Personally, I would like to renounce speech altogether and, like organic nature, communicate everything I have to say visually.
-
The most original of authors are not so because they advance what is new, but more because they know how to say something, as if it had never been said before.
-
We cannot and must not get rid of nor deny our characteristics. But we can give them shape and direction.
-
When we treat man as he is, we make him worse than he is; when we treat him as if he already were what he potentially could be, we make him what he should be.
-
It is ever true that he who does nothing for others, does nothing for himself.
-
So long as you live and work, you will be misunderstood; to that you must resign yourself once and for all. Be silent!
-
Art is constitutive-the artist determines beauty. He does not take it over.
-
Some books seem to have been written, not to teach us anything, but to let us know that the author has known something.
-
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.