Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Quotes
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Words express neither objects nor ourselves.
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He who serves the public is a poor animal; he worries himself to death and no one thanks him for it.
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In politics as on a sickbed men toss from side to side in hope of lying more comfortably.
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There is no way to face the great advantages of another person than through love.
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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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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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Austere perseverance, hash and continuous... rarely fails of its purpose, for its silent power grows irresistible greater with time.
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Treat a person as they are, they will remain so. Treat a person the way that person can be and is capable of being and that person will become as he or she can be and should be.
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A resolution that is communicated is no longer within thy power; thy attentions become now the plaything of chance; he who would have his commands certainly carried out must take man by surprise.
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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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If you want someone to develop a specific trait, treat them as though they already had it.
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A man who cannot command himself will always be a slave.
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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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Some people spend the day in complaining of a headache, and the night in drinking the wine that gives it.
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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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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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Each traveler should know what he has to see, and what properly belongs to him, on a journey.
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Beware of a man of one book.
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I will listen to anyone's convictions, but pray keep your doubts to yourself.
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If one has not read the newspapers for some months and then reads them all together, one sees, as one never saw before, how much time is wasted with this kind of literature.
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To me the external existence of my soul is proved from my idea of activity. If I work incessantly until my death, nature will give me another form of existence when the present can no longer sustain my spirit.
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There is no permanence in doubt; it incites the mind to closer inquiry and experiment, from which, if rightly managed, certainty proceeds, and in this alone can man find thorough satisfaction.
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We know accurately only when we know little, with knowledge doubt increases.
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What is the freedom of the most free? To do what is right!