Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Quotes
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Every spoken word arouses our self-will.
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The human mind will not be confined to any limits.
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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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We all walk in mysteries. We are surrounded by an atmosphere about which we still know nothing at all.
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It is delivery that makes the orators success.
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Man must strive, and striving he must err.
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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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We must not take the faults of our youth with us into old age, for age brings along its own defects.
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The force of a language does not consist of rejecting what is foreign but of swallowing it.
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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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Riches amassed in haste will diminish; but those collected by hand and little by little will multiply.
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If you must tell me your opinions, tell me what you believe in. I have plenty of doubts of my own.
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The most congenial social occasions are those ruled by cheerful deference of each for all.
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I treat my heart like a sick child and gratify its every fancy.
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Die Wahrheit widerspricht unserer Natur, der Irrthum nicht, und zwar aus einem sehr einfachen Grunde: die Wahrheit fordert, daß wir uns für beschränkt erkennen follen, der Irrthum schmeichelt uns. wir seien auf ein- oder die andere Weise unbegränzt.
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The brilliant passes, like the dew at morn; The true endures, for ages yet unborn.
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Life is too short to drink bad wine.
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I am the Spirit that denies.
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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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Microscopes and telescopes really confuse our minds.
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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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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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There is no outward sign of true courtesy that does not rest on a deep moral foundation.