Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Quotes
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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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Gifts come from above in their own peculiar forms.
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Those who hope for no other life are dead even for this.
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The hardest thing is to see what's under your very eyes.
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The destiny of any nation at any given time depends on the opinion of its young people, those under twenty-five.
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Every solution of a problem is a new problem.
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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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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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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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A person places themselves on a level with the ones they praise.
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Character is constructed amidst the tempests of the World.
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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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We know accurately only when we know little, with knowledge doubt increases.
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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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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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Whoso is content with pure experience and acts upon it has enough of truth.
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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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Nature is beneficent. I praise her and all her works. She is silent and wise. She is cunning, but for good ends. She has brought me here and will also lead me away. She may scold me, but she will not hate her work. I trust her.
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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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To create something you must be something.
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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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Thank God when he oppresses you, and again when he releases you.
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Giving is the business of the rich.
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There are people who make no mistakes because they never wish to do anything worth doing.