Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Quotes
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He is a man whom it is impossible to please, because he is never pleased with himself.
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I hate every violent overthrow, because as much is destroyed as is gained by it.
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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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I think that I am better than the people who are trying to reform me.
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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.
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He only earns his freedom and his life Who takes them every day by storm.
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It is the color closest to light. In its utmost purity it always implies the nature of brightness and has a cheerful, serene, gently stimulating character. Hence, experience teaches us that yellow makes a thoroughly warm and comforting impression.
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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.
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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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We talk too much. We should talk less and draw more.
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It is a great error to take oneself for more than one is, or for less than one is worth.
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So long as you live and work, you will be misunderstood; to that you must resign yourself once and for all. Be silent!
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It is a maxim of wise government to treat people not as they should be but as they actually are.
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Continue to make the demands of the day your immediate concern, and take occasion to test the purity of your hearts and the steadfastness of your spirits. When you then take a deep breath and rise above the cares of this world and in an hour of leisure, you will surely win the proper frame of mind to face devoutly what is above us, with reverence, seeing in all events the manifestation of a higher guidance.
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I have found among my papers a sheet . . . in which I call architecture frozen music.
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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.
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Whatever we may say against collections, which present authors in a disjointed form, they nevertheless bring about many excellent results. We are not always so composed, so full of wisdom, that we are able to take in at once the whole scope of a work according to its merits. Do we not mark in a book passages which seem to have a direct reference to ourselves? Young people especially, who have failed in acquiring a complete cultivation of mind, are roused in a praiseworthy way by brilliant passages.
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Whether one show one's self a man of genius in science or compose a song, the only point is, whether the thought, the discovery, the deed, is living and can live on.
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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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Give shape, artist! don't talk! Your poem be but a breath.
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Science arose from poetry... when times change the two can meet again on a higher level as friends.
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It is natural to man to regard himself as the final cause of creation.
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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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Humans fear reason, but they ought to fear stupidity- for reason can be hard, but stupidity can be fatal.