Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Quotes
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There is nothing more fearful than imagination without taste. [Ger., Es ist nichts furchterlicher als Einbildungskraft ohne Geschmack.]
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Just as, out of habit, one consults a run-down clock as though it were still going, so too one may look at the face of a beautiful woman as though he still loved her.
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We should know mankind better if we were not so anxious to resemble one another.
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One can be instructed in society, one is inspired only in solitude.
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Nothing puts me so completely out of patience as the utterance of a wretched commonplace when I am talking from my inmost heart.
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The aim of living is life itself.
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Ye great teachers: listen to what you say!
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Reality surpasses imagination; and we see, breathing, brightening, and moving before our eyes sights dearer to our hearts than any we ever beheld in the land of sleep.
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If only these treasures were not so fragile as they are precious and beautiful.
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Create, artist, do not talk.
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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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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.
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If I accept you as you are, I will make you worse; however, if I treat you as though you are what you are capable of becoming, I help you become that.
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I think that I am better than the people who are trying to reform me.
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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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All of us, just because we are able to talk, also believe we are able to talk about language.
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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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All the knowledge I possess everyone else can acquire, but my heart is all my own.
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Give shape, artist! don't talk! Your poem be but a breath.
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It is said, that no one is a hero to their butler. The reason is, that it requires a hero to recognize a hero. The butler, however, will probably know well how to estimate his equals.
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Distance... is like futurity. A dim vastness is spread before our souls; the perceptions of our mind are as obscure as those of our vision... But alas! when we have attained our object, when the distant 'there' becomes the present 'here,' all is changed; we are as poor and circumscribed as ever, and our souls still languish for unattainable happiness.
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As for what I have done as a poet, I take no pride in whatever. Excellent poets have lived at the same time with me, poets more excellent lived before me, and others will come after me. But that in my country I am the only person who knows the truth in the difficult science of colors-of that, I say, I am not a little proud, and here have a consciousness of superiority to many.
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Those that are firm in their will mold the world to themselves.
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Whoever makes it a rule to test action by thought, thought by action, cannot falter, and if he does, will soon find his way back to the right road.