Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Quotes
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One that does not think to highly of himself is more than he thinks.
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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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For what one has in black and white, One can carry home in comfort.
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Nothing is worth more than this day. You cannot relive yesterday. Tomorrow is still beyond your reach.
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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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If you call a thing bad you do little, if you call a thing good you do much.
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Live dangerously and you live right.
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Who can think wise or stupid things at all that were not thought already in the past.
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The world is for thousands a freak show; the images flicker past and vanish; the impressions remain flat and unconnected in the soul. Thus they are easily led by the opinions of others, are content to let their impressions be shuffled and rearranged and evaluated differently.
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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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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.
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The older we get the more we must limit ourselves if we wish to be active.
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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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Art is constitutive-the artist determines beauty. He does not take it over.
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The world remains ever the same.
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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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Difficulties increase the nearer we get to the goal.
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All of us have life; few of us have an idea of it.
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The rich want good wine, the poor, plenty of wine.
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Every solution of a problem is a new problem.
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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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The moment one definitely commits oneself, then Providence moves, too. All sorts of things occur to help one that would never have otherwise occurred...unforeseen incidents and meetings and material assistance, which no man could have dreamed would have come his way.
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One cannot develop taste from what is of average quality but only from the very best.
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Austere perseverance, hash and continuous... rarely fails of its purpose, for its silent power grows irresistible greater with time.