Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Quotes
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There are people who make no mistakes because they never wish to do anything worth doing.
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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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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 the freedom of the most free? To do what is right!
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Whoso is content with pure experience and acts upon it has enough of truth.
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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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Since you know me and my destiny only too well, you probably also know what attracts me to all unfortunate people.
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To like things like, whatever one may ail; There is certain help.
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Words express neither objects nor ourselves.
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We know accurately only when we know little, with knowledge doubt increases.
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We must be young to do great things.
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A person places themselves on a level with the ones they praise.
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If it is the greatest truth that you seek, the plants can direct you.
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Giving is the business of the rich.
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Not art and science only, but patience will be required for the work.
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Beware of a man of one book.
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Those who hope for no other life are dead even for this.
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The Primal Plant is going be the strangest creature in the world, which Nature herself must envy me. With this model and the key to it, it will be possible to go on for ever inventing plants and know that their existence is logical; that is to say, if they do not actually exist, they could, for they are not the shadowy phantoms of a vain imagination, but possess an inner necessity and truth. The same law will be applicable to all other living organisms.
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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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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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The greatest evil that can befall man is that he should come to think ill of himself.
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Thank God when he oppresses you, and again when he releases you.
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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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Everything is hard before it is easy.