Goethe Quotes

To a valet no man is a hero.

I will be lord over myself.

There is nothing so terrible as activity without insight.

Hatred is active, and envy passive dislike; there is but one step from envy to hate.

Thinking is more interesting than knowing, but less interesting than looking.

Piety is not a goal but a means to attain through the purest peace of mind the highest culture.

Do not give in too much to feelings. A overly sensitive heart is an unhappy possession on this shaky earth.

Blood is a very special juice.

The aim of living is life itself.

Clever people are always the best conversations lexicon.

There is nothing insignificant in the world. It all depends on how one looks at it.

If you start to think of your physical and moral condition, you usually find that you are sick.

A leaf that is destined to grow large is full of grooves and wrinkles at the start. Now if one has no patience and wants it smooth offhand like a willow leaf, there is trouble ahead.

Over all the mountain tops is peace. In all treetops you perceive scarcely a breath. The little birds in the forest are silent. Wait then; soon, you too, will have peace.

Letters are among the most significant memorial a person can leave behind them.

We always hope, and in all things it is better to hope than to despair.

He who does not know foreign languages does not know anything about his own.

A judge who cannot punish, in the end associates themselves with the criminal.

Never by reflection, but only by doing is self- knowledge possible to one.

Personality is everything in art and poetry.

The mediator of the inexpressible is the work of art.

Hope is the second soul of the unhappy.

A reasonable man needs only to practice moderation to find happiness.

We gladly put antiquity above our age but not posterity. Only a father doesn't begrudge his son's talent.

The beginning of faith is the beginning of fruitfulness; but the beginning of unbelief, however glittering, is empty.

Alas! how much there is in education, and in our social institutions, to prepare us and our children for insanity.

He who is resolute conquers grief.

The society of women is the element of good manners.

Mediocrity has no greater consolation than in the thought that genius is not immortal.

What one doesn't understand one doesn't possess.

Time is a strange thing. It is a whimsical tyrant, which in every century has a different face for all that one says and does.

The dangers of life are infinite, and among them is safety.

A useless life is an early death. [Ger., Ein unnutz Leben ist ein fruher Tod.]

I have possessed that heart, that noble soul, in whose presence I seemed to be more than I really was, because I was all that I could be.

For a strolling damsel a doubtful reputation bears.

The sum which two married people owe to one another defies calculation. It is an infinite debt, which can only be discharged through all eternity.

The really unhappy person is the one who leaves undone what they can do, and starts doing what they don't understand; no wonder they come to grief.

Patriotism corrupts history.

When intelligent and sensible people despise knowledge in their old age, it is only because they have asked too much of it and of themselves.

He alone deserves liberty and life who daily must win them anew.

Character develops itself in the stream of life.

Who are you then?" "I am part of that power which eternally wills evil and eternally works good.

Let us live in as small a circle as we will, we are either debtors or creditors before we have had time to look around.

A person places themselves on a level with the ones they praise.

The greatest happiness for the thinking person is to have explored the explorable and to venerate in equanimity that which cannotbe explored.

The person who in shaky times also wavers only increases the evil, but the person of firm decision fashions the universe.

To accept good advice is but to increase one's own ability.

Nature goes her own way, and all that to us seems an exception is really according to order.

If children grew up according to early indications, we should have nothing but geniuses.

To know someone here or there with whom you can feel there is understanding in spite of distances or thoughts expressed That can make life a garden.