Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Quotes
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Schön war ich auch, und das war mein Verderben.
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Behaviour is a mirror in which everyone shows his image.
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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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My son, whoever wishes to keep a secret, must hide from us that he possesses one. Self complaisance over the concealed destroys its concealment.
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A true German can't stand the French, Yet willingly he drinks their wines.
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Sound and sufficient reason falls, after all, to the share of but few men, and those few men exert their influence in silence.
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All lyrical work must, as a whole, be perfectly intelligible, but in some particulars a little unintelligible.
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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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Whoever strenuously endeavors, him we can rescue.
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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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Nicht vor Irrthum zu bewahren, ist die Pflicht des Menschen erziehers; sondern den Irrenden zu leiten, ja ihn seinen Irrthum aus vollen Bechern ausschlürfen zu lassen, das ist Weisheit der Lehrer. Wer seinen Irrthum nur kostet, hält lange damit Haus; er freuet sich dessen als eines seltenen Glücks; aber wer ihn ganz erschöpft, der muß ihn kennenlernen.
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One is never satisfied with a portrait of a person that one knows.
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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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Die Botschaft hör ich wohl, allein, mir fehlt der Glaube
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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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Individuality of expression is the beginning and end of all art.
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The brilliant passes, like the dew at morn; The true endures, for ages yet unborn.
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The decline in literature indicates a decline in the nation. The two keep pace in their downward tendency.
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Should I not be proud, when for twenty years I have had to admit to myself that the great Newton and all the mathematicians and noble calculators along with him were involved in a decisive error with respect to the doctrine of color, and that I among millions was the only one who knew what was right in this great subject of nature?
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Young Schopenhauer, a zealous and thorough-going Kantian, tried to explain that light would cease to exist along with the seeing eye. 'What!' he said, according to Schopenhauer's own report, 'looking at him with his Jove-like eyes,'-'You should rather say that you would not exist if the light could not see you?'
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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.
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Yet through delivery orators succeed, I feel that I am far behind indeed.
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Mountains cannot be surmounted except by winding paths.
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When you see some evil you proceed to immediate action, you make an immediate attack to cure the symptom.