Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Quotes
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Yet he who grasps the moment's gift, He is the proper man.
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The Woman-Soul leadeth us upward and on!
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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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What is hardest of all? That which seems most simple: to see with your eyes what is before your eyes.
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Nothing puts me so completely out of patience as the utterance of a wretched commonplace when I am talking from my inmost heart.
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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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The most original of authors are not so because they advance what is new, but more because they know how to say something, as if it had never been said before.
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The rich want good wine, the poor, plenty of wine.
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Most pioneers are at the mercy of doubt at the beginning, whether of their worth, of their theories, or of the whole enigmatic field in which they labour.
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Whoso is content with pure experience and acts upon it has enough of truth.
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Reality surpasses imagination; and we see, breathing, brightening, and moving before our eyes sights dearer to our hearts than any we ever beheld in the land of sleep.
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Objects in pictures should so be arranged as by their very position to tell their own story.
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He only earns his freedom and his life Who takes them every day by storm.
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Power is neither male nor female.
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I will listen to anyone's convictions, but pray keep your doubts to yourself.
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A man who cannot command himself will always be a slave.
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Profoundness, genius, spontaneity, merit, nobility, ingenuity, voice propriety, feeling, discernment, sensibility, good taste, great tone, rightness, courtliness, vivacity, boldness, style, freshness, harmony, perfection, imagination, purity, correctness. The greatest writer of all times. God's most astonishing creation.
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Austere perseverance, hash and continuous... rarely fails of its purpose, for its silent power grows irresistible greater with time.
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Most men, even the most accomplished, are of limited faculties; every one sets a value on certain qualities in himself and others: these alone he is willing to favour, these alone will he have cultivated.
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I hate all bungling as I do sin, but particularly bungling in politics, which leads to the misery and ruin of many thousands and millions of people.
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We know accurately only when we know little, with knowledge doubt increases.
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The dear good people don't know how long it takes to learn to read. I've been at it eighty years, and can't say yet that I've reached the goal.
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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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For what one has in black and white, One can carry home in comfort.