Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Quotes
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Our senses don't deceive us: our judgment does.
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The world is so empty if one thinks only of mountains, rivers and cities; but to know someone who thinks and feels with us, and who, though distant, is close to us in spirit, this makes the earth for us an inhabited garden.
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Science and art belong to the whole world, and before them vanish the barriers of nationality.
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He is a prophet and not a poet and therefore his Koran is to be seen as Divine Law, and not as a book of a human being made for education or entertainment.
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The few of understanding, vision rare, Who veiled not from the herd their hearts, but tried, Poor generous fools, to lay their feelings bare, Them have men always burnt and crucified.
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Instruction does much, but encouragement everything.
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No man learns to know his inmost nature by introspection, for he rates himself sometimes too low, and often too high, by his own measurement. Man knows himself only by comparing himself with other men; it is life that touches his genuine worth.
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The sum which two married people owe to one another defies calculation. It is an infinite debt, which can only be discharged through all eternity.
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Nothing is more damaging to a new truth than an old error.
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I have learned much from disease which life could have never taught me anywhere else.
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The highest cannot be spoken; it can only be acted.
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A teacher who can arouse a feeling for one single good action, for one single good poem, accomplishes more than he who fills our memory with rows on rows of natural objects, classified with name and form.
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Do not, I beg you, look for anything behind phenomena. They are themselves their own lesson.
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To the world you might be one person, but to one person, you might be the world. Kindness is the golden chain by which our world is bound together.
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Every spoken word arouses our self-will.
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The Christian religion, though scattered and abroad will in the end gather itself together at the foot of the cross.
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So gewiß ist der allein glücklich und groß, der weder zu herrschen noch zu gehorchen braucht, um etwas zu sein!
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The man who masters himself is delivered from the force that binds all creatures.
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Microscopes and telescopes really confuse our minds.
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However often we turn to it the Qur'an at first disgusting us each time afresh, it soon attracts, astounds, and in the end enforces our reverence... Its style, in accordance with its contents and aim is stern, grand, terrible - ever and anon truly sublime - Thus this book will go on exercising through all ages a most potent influence.
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Riches amassed in haste will diminish; but those collected by hand and little by little will multiply.
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Belief is not the beginning of knowledge - it is the end.
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Words are mere sound and smoke, dimming the heavenly light.
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Let the noble man Be generous and good, Tirelessly achieving What is just and useful: Let him be a model For those beings whom he surmises.