Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Quotes
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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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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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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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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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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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What is hardest of all? That which seems most simple: to see with your eyes what is before your eyes.
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Giving is the business of the rich.
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Whoso is content with pure experience and acts upon it has enough of truth.
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What is the freedom of the most free? To do what is right!
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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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To create something you must be something.
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A person places themselves on a level with the ones they praise.
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Mysteries are not necessarily miracles.
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It is so hard that one cannot really have confidence in doctors and yet cannot do without them.
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All understanding begins in wonder!
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The human race is a monotonous affair. Most people spend the greatest part of their time working in order to live, and what little freedom remains so fills them with fear that they seek out any and every means to be rid of it.
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All intelligent thoughts have already been thought; what is necessary is only to try to think them again.
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Every solution of a problem is a new problem.
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Character is constructed amidst the tempests of the World.
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We know accurately only when we know little, with knowledge doubt increases.
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There is no way to face the great advantages of another person than through love.
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Each animal is an end in itself.
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What must the English and French think of the language of our philosophers when we Germans do not understand it ourselves?