Goethe Quotes

Come my little one, and give me your hand.

Self-love exaggerates our faults as well as our virtues.

The greatest act of faith takes place when a man finally decides that he is not God.

The field of experience is the whole universe in all directions. Theory remains shut up within the limits of human faculties.

While man's desires and aspirations stir he cannot choose but err.

Everyone believes in his youth that the world really began with him, and that all merely exists for his sake.

Every offense is avenged on earth.

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.

He who has a task to perform must know how to take sides, or he is quite unworthy of it.

We are never further from what we wish than when we believe that we have what we wished for.

The credit of advancing science has always been due to individuals and never to the age.

If you modestly enjoy your fame you are not unworthy to rank with the holy.

Nothing should be valued higher than the value of the day.

Love can do much, but duty more.

We will burn that bridge when we come to it.

It is said, that no one is a hero to their butler. The reason is, that it requires a hero to recognize a hero. The butler, however, will probably know well how to estimate his equals.

A noble man is led far by woman's gentle words. [Ger., Ein edler Mann wird durch ein gutes Wort Der Frauen weit gefuhrt.]

What reason would grope for in vain, spontaneous impulse ofttimes achieves at a stroke, with light and pleasureful guidance.

But what is your duty? What the day demands. [Ger., Was aber ist deine Pflicht? Die Forderung des Tages.]

Duty is the demand of the hour.

All sects seem to me to be right in what they assert, and wrong in what they deny.

No sacred fane requires us to submit to insult.

And here, poor fool, with all my lore I stand no wiser than before.

A good man, through obscurest aspirations Has still an instinct of the one true way.

Thou must (in commanding and winning, or serving and losing, suffering or triumphing) be either anvil or hammer.

There are men who never err, because they never propose anything rational.

To appear at church every Sunday; to look down upon, and let himself be looked at for an hour by the congregation, is the best means of becoming popular which can be recommended to a young sovereign.

Poor fool! in whose petty estimation all things are little.

I do not speak of what I cannot praise.

In the end we retain from our studies only that which we practically apply.

Since I have heard often enough that everyone in the end has his own religion, nothing seemed more natural to me than to fashion my own.

Alas! sorrow from happiness is oft evolved.

Courage and modesty are the most unequivocal of virtues, for they are of a kind that hypocrisy cannot imitate; they too have this quality in common, that they are expressed by the same color.

Our passions are true phoenixes; as the old burn out the new straight rise up from the ashes.

He who cannot love must learn to flatter.

Every bird has its decoy, and every man is led and misled in his own peculiar way.

My inheritance how lordly wide and fair; Time is my fair seed-field, to Time I'm heir.

A vain man can never be altogether rude. Desirous as he is of pleasing, he fashions his manners after those of others.

That is the way of youth and life in general: that we do not understand the strategy until after the campaign is over.

The greater part of all the mischief in the world arises from the fact that men do not sufficiently understand their own aims.

He is dead in this world who has no belief in another.

For many people, one of the most frustrating aspects of life is not being able to understand other people's behavior.

The century is advanced, but every individual begins afresh.

All our knowledge is symbolic.

A noble soul alone can noble souls attract; And knows alone, as ye, to hold them.

The history of mankind is his character.

The decline in literature indicates a decline in the nation. The two keep pace in their downward tendency.

The mortal race is far too weak not to grow dizzy on unwonted brights.

When young, one is confident to be able to build palaces for mankind, but when the time comes one has one's hands full just to be able to remove their trash.

The universal subjugator, the commonplace.