Goethe Quotes

Man is a simple being, and however rich, varied, and unfathomable he may be, the cycle of his situations is soon run through.

Let there be truth between us.

Yes, I have finally arrived to this Capital of the World! I now see all the dreams of my youth coming to life... Only in Rome is it possible to understand Rome.

Still this planet's soil for noble deeds grants scope abounding.

What dazzles, for the moment spends its spirit; Whats genuine, shall posterity inherit.

Neither art thou the man to catch the fiend and hold him! [Ger., Du bist noch nicht der Mann den Teufel festzuhalten.

Power is neither male nor female.

I hate every violent overthrow, because as much is destroyed as is gained by it.

Modern poets add a lot of water to their ink.

What you have inherited from your forefathers, it takes work to make it your own.

If I work incessantly to the last, nature owes me another form of existence when the present one collapses.

I always had an aversion to your apostles of freedom; each but sought for himself freedom to do what he liked.

Over the trackless past, somewhere, Lie the lost days of our tropic youth, Only regained by faith and prayer, Only recalled by prayer and plaint, Each lost day has its patron saint!

Oral delivery aims at persuasion and making the listener believe they are converted. Few persons are capable of being convinced the majority allow themselves to be persuaded.

If each one does their duty as an individual and if each one works in their own proper vocation, it will be right with the whole.

Secrecy has many advantages, for when you tell someone the purpose of any object right away, they often think there is nothing to it.

nothing puts me so completely out of patience as the utterance of a wretched commonplace when I am talking from my inmost heart.

I make presents to the mother but think of the daughter.

To the person with a firm purpose all men and things are servants.

Man's highest merit always is, as much as possible, to rule external circumstances and as little as possible to let himself be ruled by them.

Tolerance should really be only a temporary attitude; it must lead to recognition. To tolerate means to offend.

We cannot and must not get rid of nor deny our characteristics. But we can give them shape and direction.

How many years must a man do nothing, before he can at all know what is to be done and how to do it!

Whatever Nature undertakes, she can only accomplish it in a sequence. She never makes a leap.

Death is Nature's expert advice to get plenty of Life.

If you inquire what people are like here, I must answer, "The same as everywhere."

It is only necessary to grow old to become more charitable and even indulgent. I see no fault committed by others that I have not committed myself.

Prudent and active men, who know their strength and use it with limit and circumspection, alone go far in the affairs of the world.

We don't get to know anything but what we love.

Who is the happiest man? He who is alive to the merit of others, and can rejoice in their enjoyment as if it were his own.

Originality provokes originality.

You don't love if you don't take the beloved's faults for virtues.

We are pantheists when we study nature, polytheists when we write poetry, monotheists in our morality.

What one has wished for in youth, in old age one has in abundance.

Who is the most sensible person? The one who finds what is to their own advantage in all that happens to them.

We are forced to participate in the games of life before we can possibly learn how to use the options in the rules governing them.

Music is so elevated that it is beyond the reach of intellect and there flows from it an influence which is all-potent, and which noone can explain.

The most difficult thing is what is thought to be the simplest; to really see the things which are before your eyes.

There are people who make no mistakes because they never wish to do anything worth doing.

My counsel is, to force nothing, and rather to trifle and sleep away all unproductive days and hours, than on such days to compose something that will afterwards give no pleasure.

We eagerly get hold of a law that serves as a weapon to our passions.

Mannerism always wants to be finished and doesn't enjoy the process. Genuine, truly great talent, however, finds its greatest satisfaction in the production.

Just begin and the mind grows heated; continue, and the task will be completed!

We all walk in mysteries. We are surrounded by an atmosphere about which we still know nothing at all.

Beware of wishing for anything in youth, because you will get it in middle age.

Daily life is more instructive than the most effective book.

Every need whose true satisfaction is denied leads by necessity to faith.

You are, when all is done-just what you are.

Give me those days with heart in riot, The depths of bliss that touched on pain, The force of hate, and love's disquiet- Ah, give me back my youth again!

Oh happy he who still can hope in our day to breathe the truth while plunged in seas of error! What we don't know is really what we need, and what we know is of no use to us whatever!