Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Quotes
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The effects of good music are not just because it's new; on the contrary music strikes us more the more familiar we are with it.
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Properly speaking, such work is never finished; one must declare it so when, according to time and circumstances, one has done one's best.
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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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Let us live in as small a circle as we will, we are either debtors or creditors before we have had time to look round.
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I am the Spirit that denies.
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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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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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The most congenial social occasions are those ruled by cheerful deference of each for all.
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What you have inherited from your forefathers, it takes work to make it your own.
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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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Modern poets add a lot of water to their ink.
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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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Those who make use of devotion as a means and end generally are hypocrites.
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Love does not rule; but it trains, and that is more.
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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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Let us seek to fathom those things that are fathomable and reserve those things which are unfathomable for reverence in quietude.
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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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Ich bedauere die Menschen, welche von der Vergänglichkeit der Dinge viel Wesens machen und sich in Betrachtung irdischer Nichtigkeit verlieren. Sind wir ja eben deßhalb da, um das Vergängliche unvergänglich zu machen; das kann ja nur dadurch geschehen, wenn man beides zu schätzen weiß.
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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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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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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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Schön war ich auch, und das war mein Verderben.
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Words are mere sound and smoke, dimming the heavenly light.
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Getting along with women, Knocking around with men, Having more credit than money, Thus one goes through the world.