Goethe Quotes

How circumscribed is woman's destiny!

What I possess, seems far away to me, and what is gone becomes reality.

Gifts come from above in their own peculiar forms. [Ger., Die Gaben Kommen von oben herab, in ihren eignen Gestalten.]

If you miss the first buttonhole, you will not succeed in buttoning up your coat.

If we are out of synch with ourselves, everything is out of synch for us.

Solitude is fine when you are at peace with yourself and have something definite to do.

Forget not that the man who cannot enjoy his own natural gifts in silence, and find his reward in the exercise of them, will generally find himself badly off.

It's true that nothing in this world makes us so necessary to others as the affection we have for them.

To make converts is the natural ambition of everyone.

Miracle is the pet child of faith.

The world is full of contradiction.

Do not, I beg you, look for anything behind phenomena. They are themselves their own lesson.

Man's restlessness makes him strive.

Is this the destiny of man? Is he only happy before he has acquired his reason or after he has lost it?

Do you want to live happily? Travel with two bags, one for giving, the other for receiving.

To know where a thing is we must have found it.

Shakespeare is dangerous to young poets; they cannot but reproduce him, while they fancy that they produce themselves.

The realization of the self is only possible if one is productive, if one can give birth to one's own potentialities.

We who didn't inherit political power nor are made to acquire riches like nothing better than that which expands and solidifies the power of the spirit.

The people rate strength before everything.

For I have been a man, and that means to have been a fighter.

If you are to accomplish all that one demands of you, you must overestimate your own worth.

Those only obtain love, for the most part, who seek it not.

It is much easier to meet with error than to find truth; error is on the surface, and can be more easily met with; truth is hid in great depths, the way to seek does not appear to all the world.

Love grants in a moment What toil can hardly achieve in an age. [Ger., In einem Augenblick gewahrt die Liebe Was Muhe kaum in langer Zeit erreicht.]

Voluntary dependence is the wonderful form of existence, and how could that be possible without love?

You'll never attain it unless you know the feeling.

Humans fear reason, but they ought to fear stupidity- for reason can be hard, but stupidity can be fatal.

We don't get to know people when they come to us; we must go to them to find out what they are like.

Nature is the living, visible garment of God.

Let him who believes in immortality enjoy his happiness in silence; he has no reason to give himself airs about it.

Man is not born to solve the problem of the universe, but to find out what he has to do; and to restrain himself within the limits of his comprehension.

Theories are usually the over-hasty efforts of an impatient understanding that would gladly be rid of phenomena, and so puts in their place pictures, notions, nay, often mere words.

How many years you have to keep on doing, until you know what to do and how to do!

Tell me, how do you cope so calmly With crazy youth's arrogant way? Indeed, youth would be insufferable, Had I myself not also been insufferable.

It is a misfortune to pass at once from observation to conclusion, and to regard both as of equal value; but it befalls many a student.

The world of empirical morality consists for the most part of nothing but ill will and envy.

True art can only spring from the intimate linking of the serious and the playful.

Normally, people believe that, if they hear just words, that these words must lead to some thought.

It is the great triumph of genius to make the common appear novel.

Gifts come from above in their own peculiar forms.

Napoleon for the sake of a good name broke in pieces half the world.

Mozart is a human incarnation of the divine force of creation.

Nobody, they say, is a hero to his valet. Of course; for a man must be a hero to understand a hero. The valet, I dare say, has great respect for some person of his own stamp.

The shudder of awe is humanity's highest faculty, Even though this world is forever altering its values.

Dauer in Wechsel. Duration in change.

He who can not learn to love must flatter.

If you want to get pleasure out of life, you must attach value to the world.

Self knowledge is best learned not by contemplation, but by action.

I laugh at my heart, and do its will