Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Quotes
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The spirits that I summoned upI now can't rid myself of.
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We gladly put antiquity above our age but not posterity. Only a father doesn't begrudge his son's talent.
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True observers of nature, although they may think differently, will still agree that everything that is, everything that is observable as a phenomenon, can only exhibit itself in one of two ways. It is either a primal polarity that is able to unify, or it is a primal unity that is able to divide. The operation of nature consists of splitting the united or uniting the divided; this is the eternal movement of systole and diastole of the heartbeat, the inhalation and exhalation of the world in which we live, act, and exist.
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I treat my heart like a sick child and gratify its every fancy.
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We can't form our children on our own concepts; we must take them and love them as God gives them to us.
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Do not hurry; do not rest.
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Die Botschaft hör ich wohl, allein, mir fehlt der Glaube
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Die Wahrheit widerspricht unserer Natur, der Irrthum nicht, und zwar aus einem sehr einfachen Grunde: die Wahrheit fordert, daß wir uns für beschränkt erkennen follen, der Irrthum schmeichelt uns. wir seien auf ein- oder die andere Weise unbegränzt.
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Much there is I can stand. Most things not easy to sufferI bear with quiet resolve, just as a God commands it.Only a few things I find as repugnant as snakes and poison.These four: tobacco smoke, bedbugs and garlic and Christ.
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Da stehe ich nun, ich armer Thor!Und bin so klug als wie zuvor.
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A man does not mind being blamed for his faults, and being punished for them, and he patiently suffers much for them; but he becomes impatient if he is required to give them up.
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It is with art as with love: How can a man of the world,with all his distractions, keep the inwardness which an artist must possess if he hopes to attain perfection? That inwardness which the spectator must share if he is to understand the work as the artist wishes and hopes... Believe me, talents are like virtues; either you must love them for their own sake or renounce them altogether. And they are only recognized and rewarded when we have practised them in secret, like a dangerous mystery."
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Our passions are the true phoenixes; when the old one is burnt out, a new one rises from its ashes.
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Science and art belong to the whole world, and before them vanish the barriers of nationality.
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A world without love would be no world.
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Why should we not recognize in the lightning, the thunder, and the storm wind, the approach of an overwhelming Power, and in the scent of flowers and the gently rustling zephyr the presence of a Being full of love?
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Lord Byron is only great as a poet; as soon as he reflects he is a child.
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We all walk in mysteries. We are surrounded by an atmosphere about which we still know nothing at all.
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Is it so big a mystery what god and man and world are? No! but nobody knows how to solve it so the mystery hangs on.
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There's nothing clever that hasn't been thought of before - you've just got to try to think it all over again.
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Yet through delivery orators succeed, I feel that I am far behind indeed.
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Life is too short to drink bad wine.
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Tell me you stones, O speak, you towering palaces!Streets, say a word! Spirit of this place, are you dumb?All things are alive in your sacred wallsEternal Rome, it's only for me all is still.
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Say what we may of the inadequacy of translation, yet the work is and will always be one of the weightiest and worthiest undertakings in the general concerns of the world.