Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Quotes
-
I love those who yearn for the impossible.
-
We do not have to visit a madhouse to find disordered minds; our planet is the mental institution of the universe.
-
In every artist there is a touch of audacity without which no talent is conceivable.
-
'I have found a paper of mine among some others in which I call architecture 'petrified music.' Really there is something in this; the tone of mind produced by architecture approaches the effect of music.'
-
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.
-
Wer nichts wagt, gerwinnt nichts. Wer nie sein Brot mit Tränen aß,Wer nie die kummervollen NächteAuf seinem Bette weinend saß,Der kennt euch nicht, ihr himmlischen Mächte.
-
A world without love would be no world.
-
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."
-
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.
-
I treat my heart like a sick child and gratify its every fancy.
-
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?
-
Beauty is a manifestation of secret natural laws, which otherwise would have been hidden from us forever.
-
Wer fremde Sprachen nicht kennt, weiß nichts von seiner eigenen.
-
The highest cannot be spoken; it can only be acted.
-
One can't dull a project better than by discussing it repeatedly.
-
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.
-
For I have been a man, and that means to have been a fighter.
-
These auspicious aspects, which the astrologers subsequently interpreted for me, may have been the causes of my preservation.
-
For a strolling damsel a doubtful reputation bears.
-
That which is eternal in Woman lifts us above.
-
We must not take the faults of our youth with us into old age, for age brings along its own defects.
-
Yet through delivery orators succeed, I feel that I am far behind indeed.
-
Whoever strenuously endeavors, him we can rescue.
-
I have learned much from disease which life could have never taught me anywhere else.