Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Quotes
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To like things like, whatever one may ail; There is certain help.
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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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Go to the place where the thing you wish to know is native; your best teacher is there. Where the thing you wish to know is so dominant that you must breathe its very atmosphere, there teaching is moat thorough, and learning is most easy. You acquire a language most readily in the country where it is spoken; you study mineralogy boat among miners; and so with everything else.
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Beware of a man of one book.
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Only law can give us freedom.
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Judge a man's character by what he finds ridiculous.
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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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Thank God when he oppresses you, and again when he releases you.
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The hardest thing is to see what's under your very eyes.
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Children, like dogs, have so sharp and fine a scent that they detect and hunt out everything--the bad before all the rest. They also know well enough how this or that friend stands with their parents; and as they practice no dissimulation whatever, they serve as excellent barometers by which to observe the degree of favor or disfavor at which we stand with their parents.
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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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The flowers are full of honey, but only the bee finds out the sweetness.
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The older we get the more we must limit ourselves if we wish to be active.
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There are people who make no mistakes because they never wish to do anything worth doing.
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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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Gifts come from above in their own peculiar forms.
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When Nature begins to reveal her open secret to a man, he feels an irresistible longing for her worthiest interpreter, Art.
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Each traveler should know what he has to see, and what properly belongs to him, on a journey.
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Beautiful is greater than Good, for it includes the Good.
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On all the peaks lies peace.
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To the person with a firm purpose all men and things are servants.
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The rich want good wine, the poor, plenty of wine.
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Whenever I hear people talking about liberal ideas, I am always astounded that men should love to fool themselves with empty sounds. An idea should never be liberal; it must be vigorous, positive, and without loose ends so that it may fulfill its divine mission and be productive.
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Everything is hard before it is easy.