Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Quotes
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Ah, how often I've cursed those foolish pages,That showed my youthful sufferings to everyone!If Werther had been my brother, and I'd killed him,His sad ghost could hardly have persecuted me more.
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Everything that we encounter leaves traces behind. Everything contributes imperceptibly to our education.
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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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The nude is the perfect expression of freedom. Freedom to be.
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Man... knows only when he is satisfied and when he suffers, and only his sufferings and his satisfactions instruct him concerning himself, teach him what to seek and what to avoid. For the rest, man is a confused creature; he knows not whence he comes or whither he goes, he knows little of the world, and above all, he knows little of himself.
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One must be something to be able to do something.
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A distracted existence leads us to no goal.
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The man who masters himself is delivered from the force that binds all creatures.
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Do not hurry; do not rest.
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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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The dangers of life are infinite, and among them is safety.
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Man darf nur alt werden, um milder zu sein; ich sehe keinen Fehler begehen, den ich nicht auch begangen hätte.
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Plants and flowers of the commonest kind can form a pleasing diary, because nothing which calls back to us the remembrance of a happy moment can be insignificant.
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There is no outward sign of true courtesy that does not rest on a deep moral foundation.
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Hypotheses are only the pieces of scaffolding which are erected round a building during the course of construction, and which are taken away as soon as the edifice is completed.
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Do not, I beg you, look for anything behind phenomena. They are themselves their own lesson.
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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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Our passions are the true phoenixes; when the old one is burnt out, a new one rises from its ashes.
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A violet on the meadow grew, That no one saw, that no one knew, It was a modest flower. A shepherdess pass'd by that way. Light footed, pretty and so gay; That way she came, Softly warbling forth her lay.
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The bad thing is that thinking about thought doesn't help at all; one has to have it from nature so that the good ideas appear before us like free children of God calling to us: Here we are.
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In nature we never see anything isolated, but everything in connection with something else which is before it, beside it, under it and over it.
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Yes, my love, who soever lives, loses, . . . but he also wins.
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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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Ein unnütz Leben ist ein früher Tod...