Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Quotes
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The art of governing is a great metier, requiring the whole man, and it is therefore not well for a ruler to have too strong tendencies for other affairs.
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To make an epoch in the world, two conditions are manifestly essential-a good head and a great inheritance.
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Master and Doctor are my titles; for ten years now, without repose, I held my erudite recitals and led my pupils by the nose.
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A thinking man's greatest happiness is to have fathomed what can be fathomed and to revere in silence what cannot be fathomed.
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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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Getting along with women, Knocking around with men, Having more credit than money, Thus one goes through the world.
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You are, when all is done-just what you are.
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The greatest genius will not be worth much if he pretends to draw exclusively from his own resources.
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One must be something to be able to do something.
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In limitations he first shows himself the master,And the law can only bring us freedom.
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Happy the man who early learns the wide chasm that lies between his wishes and his powers.
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Neuere Poeten tun viel Wasser in die Tinte.
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We are forced to participate in the games of life before we can possibly learn how to use the options in the rules governing them.
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Publishers are all cohorts of the devil; there must be a special hell for them somewhere.
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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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I do not know myself, and God forbid that I should.
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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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Mozart is a human incarnation of the divine force of creation.
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Nature! We live in her midst and know her not. She is incessantly speaking to us, but betrays not her secret. We constantly act upon her, and yet have no power over her. Variant: NATURE! We are surrounded and embraced by her: powerless to separate ourselves from her, and powerless to penetrate beyond her.
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Wenn mancher sich nicht verpflichtet fühlte, das Unwahre zu wiederholen, weil er’s einmal gefügt hat, fo wären es ganz andere Leute geworden.
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Die Botschaft hör ich wohl, allein, mir fehlt der Glaube
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One is never satisfied with a portrait of a person that one knows.
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Necessity is cruel, but it is the only test of inward strength. Every fool may live according to his own likings.
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Yet through delivery orators succeed, I feel that I am far behind indeed.