Goethe Quotes

In the realm of ideas everything depends on enthusiasm in the real world all rests on perseverance.

Every day look at a beautiful picture read a beautiful poem listen to some beautiful music and if possible say some reasonable thing.

Modern poets mix too much water with their ink.

Treat people as if they were what they should be and you help them become what they are capable of becoming.

Daring ideas are like chessmen moved forward. They may be beaten but they may start a winning game.

Everybody undertakes what he sees another successful in whether he has the aptitude for it or not.

Man is not born to solve the problems of the universe but to find out what he has to do ... within the limits of his comprehension.

Science and art belong to the whole world and before them vanish the barriers of nationality.

All the knowledge I possess everyone else can acquire but my heart is all my own.

As soon as you trust yourself you will know how to live.

If God had wanted me otherwise He would have created me otherwise.

I am what I am so take me as I am!

God made man simple but how he changed and got complicated is hard to say.

We are never further from our wishes than when we imagine that we possess what we have desired.

Let him who believes in immortality enjoy his happiness in silence without giving himself airs about it.

Wisdom is only found in trudi.

The society of women is the foundation of good manners.

Who does not know another language does not know his own.

Everyone hears only what he understands.

Most people work the greater part of their time for a mere living and the little freedom which remains to them so troubles them that they use every means of getting rid of it.

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

If any man wish to write in a clear style, let him be first clear in his thoughts.

Love does not dominate it cultivates.

Wood burns because it has the proper stuff in it and a man becomes famous because he has the proper stuff in him.

An unused life is an early death.

I call architecture frozen music.

Error is acceptable as long as we are young but one must not drag it along into old age.

All intelligent thoughts have already been thought what is necessary is only to try to think them again.

If God had wanted me otherwise, He would have created me otherwise.

It is after all the greatest art to limit and isolate oneself.

In art the best is good enough.

Knowing is not enough we must apply. Willing is not enough we must do.

Which government is the best? The one that teaches us to govern ourselves.

This is the highest wisdom that I own freedom and life are earned by those alone who conquer them each day anew.

Girls we love for what they are young men for what they promise to be.