Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Quotes
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Every spoken word arouses our self-will.
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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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It is delivery that makes the orators success.
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Man must strive, and striving he must err.
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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 force of a language does not consist of rejecting what is foreign but of swallowing it.
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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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Riches amassed in haste will diminish; but those collected by hand and little by little will multiply.
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The nude is the perfect expression of freedom. Freedom to be.
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The brilliant passes, like the dew at morn; The true endures, for ages yet unborn.
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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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Microscopes and telescopes really confuse our minds.
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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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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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Life is too short to drink bad wine.
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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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I treat my heart like a sick child and gratify its every fancy.
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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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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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Words are mere sound and smoke, dimming the heavenly light.
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Wer fremde Sprachen nicht kennt, weiß nichts von seiner eigenen.
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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.