Goethe Quotes

The spectacle of Nature is always new, for she is always renewing the spectators. Life is her most exquisite invention; and death is her expert contrivance to get plenty of life.

Time does not relinquish its rights, either over human beings or over mountains.

One must keep repeating the Truth.

Then to the depths! - I could as well say height: It's all the same.

Human life-everybody lives it, but only to a few is it known.

Nature reacts not only to physical disease, but also to moral weakness; when the danger increases; she gives us greater courage

The history of science is science itself; the history of the individual, the individual.

It is related of an Englishman that he hanged himself to avoid the daily task of dressing and undressing.

Whoever strikes at marriage either by word or act undermines the foundation of all moral society.

We talk too much. We should talk less and draw more.

Seize this very minute. What you can do or dream you can do, begin it. Begin it and the work will be completed

One must be something, in order to do something.

Our earthly ball a peopled garden.

Cursed Mammon be, when he with treasures To restless action spurs our fate! Cursed when for soft, indulgent leisures, He lays for us the pillows straight.

Great necessity elevates man, petty necessity casts him down

Blood is a juice of rarest quality. [Ger., Blut ist ein ganz beondrer Saft.]

Every individual who is not creative has a negative, narrow, exclusive taste and succeeds in depriving creative being of its energy and life.

I reverence the individual who understands distinctly what he wishes; who unweariedly advances, who knows the means conducive to his object, and can seize and use them.

Whoever would understand the poet Must go into the poet's country. [Ger., Wer den Dichter will verstehen Muss in Dichters Lande gehen.]

As a man is, so is his God; therefore God was so often an object of mockery. [Ger., Wie einer ist, so ist sein Gott, Darum ward Gott so oft zu Spott.]

Wouldst thou ever roam abroad? See, what is good lies by thy side. Only learn to catch happiness, for happiness is ever by you.

All rights and laws are still transmitted, Like an eternal sickness to the race. [Ger., Es erben sich Gesetz and Rechte Wie eine ew'ge Krankheit fort.]

Errors belong to libraries; truth, to the human mind.

Literature is a fragment of a fragment. Of all that ever happened, or has been said, but a fraction has been written; and of this but little is extant.

Where confidence is wanting, the most beautiful flower in the garland of love is missing.

Beloved brother, let us not forget that man can never get away from himself. [Ger., Lass uns, geliebter Bruder, nicht vergessen, Dass von sich selbst der Mensch nicht scheiden kann.]

For a brave man deserves a well-endowed girl. [Ger., Denn ein wackerer Mann verdient ein begutertes Madchen.]

The passions are like those demons with which Afrasahiab sailed down the Orus. Our only safety consists in keeping them asleep. If they we are lost.

What have the Germans gained by their boasted freedom of the press, except the liberty of abusing each other as they like?

Care is taken that trees do not grow into the sky. [Ger., Es ist dafur gesorgt, dass die Baume nicht in den Himmel wachsen.]

There is but one poetry,--true poetry.

It would not be worth your while to reach the age of seventy if all the wisdom of the world were to be foolishness before God.

Neither a work of nature nor one of art we get to know when they have been finished; we must surprise them in the process of beingcreated so as to understand them to some degree.

Association with women is the basis of good manners.

Everything in science depends on what one calls an aperçu, on becoming aware of what is at the bottom of the phenomena. Such becoming aware is infinitely fertile.

Normally, the sciences distance themselves from life and the return to it via a detour.

And we went our separate ways without having understood each other. As in this world nobody understands the other easily.

Love, whose power youth feels, is not suitable for the elderly, just as little as anything that presupposes productivity. It is rare that productivity lasts through the years.

There is no way to face the great advantages of another person than through love.

Hatred is partial, but love is still more so.

So much has already been said about Shakespeare that there doesn't seem to be anything more to say; yet it is the quality of the spirit that it forever stimulates the spirit.

Nature is so perfect that the Trinity couldn't have fashioned her any more perfect. She is an organ on which our Lord plays and the devil works the bellows.

That we understand something perfectly, that we accomplish something better than anyone else around us, that is what matters.

Reason looks at necessity as the basis of the world; reason is able to turn chance in your favor and use it. Only by having reasonremain strong and unshakable can we be called a god of the earth.

One spares old people just as one spares children.

One usually thinks people to be more dangerous than they are.

Even though the world as a whole progresses, youth must always start again from the beginning, and as individuals go through the epochs of the world's culture.

If youth is a fault, it is one that one gets rid of soon enough.

Aptitudes are assumed, they should become accomplishments. That is the purpose of all education.

For precisely when concepts fail one, Words are found at the right time.