Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Quotes
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I hold to faith in the divine love - which, so many years ago for a brief moment in a little corner of the earth, walked about as a man bearing the name of Jesus Christ - as the foundation on which alone my happiness rests.
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In all our academies we attempt far too much. ... In earlier times lectures were delivered upon chemistry and botany as branches of medicine, and the medical student learned enough of them. Now, however, chemistry and botany are become sciences of themselves, incapable of comprehension by a hasty survey, and each demanding the study of a whole life, yet we expect the medical student to understand them. He who is prudent, accordingly declines all distracting claims upon his time, and limits himself to a single branch and becomes expert in one thing.
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The most difficult thing is what is thought to be the simplest; to really see the things which are before your eyes.
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Modern poets add a lot of water to their ink.
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Belief is not the beginning of knowledge - it is the end.
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Nothing is more damaging to a new truth than an old error.
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The human mind will not be confined to any limits.
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The one who always strives, That one can be redeemed.
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The highest cannot be spoken; it can only be acted.
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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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Those who make use of devotion as a means and end generally are hypocrites.
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Microscopes and telescopes really confuse our minds.
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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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People do not mind their faults being spread out before them, but they become impatient if called on to give them up.
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The most congenial social occasions are those ruled by cheerful deference of each for all.
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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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These auspicious aspects, which the astrologers subsequently interpreted for me, may have been the causes of my preservation.
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What you have inherited from your forefathers, it takes work to make it your own.
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Every spoken word arouses our self-will.
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You will find the most pronounced hatred of other nations on the lowest cultural levels. There is, though, a level where the hatred disappears completely and where one so to speak stands above the nations and where one experiences fortune or misfortune of a neighboring country as if they had happened to one's own.
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I am what I am, so take me as I am!.
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I am the Spirit that denies.
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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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We gladly put antiquity above our age but not posterity. Only a father doesn't begrudge his son's talent.