Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Quotes
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Give shape, artist! don't talk! Your poem be but a breath.
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The miller believes that all the wheat grows so that his mill keeps running.
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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.
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Hatred is a heavy burden. It sinks the heart deep in the breast, and lies like a tombstone on all joys.
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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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The world remains ever the same.
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Some books seem to have been written, not to teach us anything, but to let us know that the author has known something.
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The traveler was active; he went strenuously in search of people, of adventure, of experience. The tourist is passive.
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The best government is that which teaches us to govern ourselves.
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For what one has in black and white, One can carry home in comfort.
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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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You can put up with everything in this world except not with a long stretch of beautiful days.
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If each one does their duty as an individual and if each one works in their own proper vocation, it will be right with the whole.
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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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Man's highest merit always is, as much as possible, to rule external circumstances and as little as possible to let himself be ruled by them.
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Death is Nature's expert advice to get plenty of Life.
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Battle not with monsters, for then you become one.
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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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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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If you want to understand poetry, You have to go to its origin, If you want to understand the poet, You have to go to the Poet's home.
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That is the way of youth and life in general: that we do not understand the strategy until after the campaign is over.
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On all the peaks lies peace.
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Difficulties increase the nearer we get to the goal.
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Nothing will change the fact that I cannot produce the least thing without absolute solitude.