Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Quotes
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If your treat an individual... as if he were what he ought to be and could be, he will become what he ought to be and could be.
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All truly wise thoughts have been thought already thousands of times; but to make them truly ours, we must think them over again honestly, until they take root in our personal experience.
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Idea and experience will never coincide in the center; only through art and action are they united.
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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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An absent friend gives us friendly company when we are well assured of his happiness.
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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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He is the happiest man who can see the connection between the end and the beginning of life.
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It is natural to man to regard himself as the final cause of creation.
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Thank God when he oppresses you, and again when he releases you.
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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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All understanding begins in wonder!
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We must be young to do great things.
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All of us have life; few of us have an idea of it.
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If it is the greatest truth that you seek, the plants can direct you.
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We always hope, and in all things it is better to hope than to despair.
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Once you have missed the first buttonhole, you'll never manage to button up.
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A person places themselves on a level with the ones they praise.
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True works of art contain their own theory and give us the measurement according to which we should judge them.
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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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Every solution of a problem is a new problem.
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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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The important thing is not to know more than all men, but to know more at each moment than any particular man.
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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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It is the great triumph of genius to make the common appear novel.