Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Quotes
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All theory, my friend, is grey, But green is life's glad golden tree.
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To have more, you must first be more.
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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.
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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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Not the maker of plans and promises, but rather the one who offers faithful service in small matters. This is the person who is most likely to achieve what is good and lasting.
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All that is alive tends toward color, individuality, specificity, effectiveness and opacity. All that is done with life inclines toward knowledge, abstraction, generality transfiguration and transparency.
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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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I hate every violent overthrow, because as much is destroyed as is gained by it.
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There are situations in which hope and fear run together, in which they mutually destroy one another and lose themselves in dull indifference.
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Everything we do has a result. But that which is right and prudent does not always lead to good, nor the contrary to what is bad.
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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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To like things like, whatever one may ail; There is certain help.
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Live dangerously and you live right.
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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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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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Battle not with monsters, for then you become one.
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Artists have a double relationship towards nature: they are her master and her slave at the same time. They are her slave in so far as they must work with means of this world so as to be understood; her master in so far as they subject these means to their higher goals and make them subservient to them.
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It is not doing the thing we like to do, but liking the thing we have to do, that makes life blessed.
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I will listen to anyone's convictions, but pray keep your doubts to yourself.
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One that does not think to highly of himself is more than he thinks.
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While man's desires and aspirations stir he cannot choose but err.
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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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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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If you call a thing bad you do little, if you call a thing good you do much.