Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe Quotes

Architecture is frozen music. [Ger., Die Backunst ist eine erstarrte Musik.]

Only the heart without a stain knows ease.

We can offer up much in the large, but to make sacrifices in little things is what we are seldom equal to.

Those that are firm in their will mold the world to themselves.

There are few who have at once thought and capacity for action. Thought expands, but lames; action animates, but narrows.

In art, to express the infinite one should suggest infinitely more than is expressed.

The human mind will not be confined to any limits.

What by a straight path cannot be reached by crooked ways is never won.

Marriage is the beginning and pinnacle of civilization.

People do not mind their faults being spread out before them, but they become impatient if called on to give them up.

It is always a sign of an unproductive time when it concerns itself with petty and technical aspects [in philology], and likewiseit is a sign of an unproductive person to pursue such trifles.

Few are open to conviction, but the majority of men are open to persuasion

The world is so great and rich, and life so full of variety, that you can never lack occasions for poems.

If a man writes a book, let him set down only what he knows. I have guesses enough of my own.

The work of art may have a moral effect, but to demand moral purpose from the artist is to make him ruin his work.

There is no better deliverance from the world than through art, and a man can form no surer bond with it.

Be above it! Make the world serve your purpose, but do not serve it.

Music, in the best sense, does not require novelty; nay, the older it is, and the more we are accustomed to it, the greater its effect.

Talk well of the absent whenever you have the opportunity.

The day is committed to error and floundering; success and achievement are matters of long range.

Stones are mute teachers; they silence the observer, and the most valuable lesson we learn from them we cannot communicate.

It is a maxim of wise government to treat people not as they should be but as they actually are.

So long as you live and work, you will be misunderstood; to that you must resign yourself once and for all. Be silent!

Everything that frees our spirit without giving us control of ourselves is ruinous.

Please send me your last pair of shoes, worn out with dancing as you mentioned in your letter, so that I might have something to press against my heart.

If you want to make life easy, make it hard.

It is a great pleasure to transport one's-self into the spirit of the times; to see how a wise man has thought before us, and to what a glorious height we have at last carried it.

Woman is mistress of the art of completely imbittering the life of the person on whom she depends.

Mannerism is always longing to have done, and has no true enjoyment in work. A genuine, really great talent, on the other hand, has its greatest happiness in execution.

We lay aside letters never to read them again, and at last we destroy them out discretion, and so disappears the most immediate breath of life, irrecoverably for ourselves and for others.

A distracted existence leads us to no goal

Take care of your body with steadfast fidelity.

Austere perseverance, hash and continuous... rarely fails of its purpose, for its silent power grows irresistible greater with time.

Some people spend the day in complaining of a headache, and the night in drinking the wine that gives it.

It is delivery that makes the orators success.

You can put up with everything in this world except not with a long stretch of beautiful days.

To act is easy, to think is hard; to act according to our thought is troublesome.

We are accustomed to see men deride what they do not understand, and snarl at the good and beautiful because it lies beyond their sympathies

What life half gives a man, posterity gives entirely.

If man thinks about his physical or moral state he usually discovers that he is ill.

If you want to reach the infinite, then explore every aspect of the finite.

What is not fully understood is not possessed.

Thinking is easy, acting is difficult, and to put one's thoughts into action is the most difficult thing in the world.

The deed is everything, the glory is naught.

Those who have no hope for a future life are already dead for the present one.

We should treat children as God does us, who makes us happiest when He leaves us under the influence of innocent delusions.

In praising or loving a child, we love and praise not that which is, but that which we hope for.

Give me the benefit of your convictions, if you have any; but keep your doubts to yourself, for I have enough of my own.

The finished man, you know, is difficult to please; a growing mind will ever show you gratitude. --Faust 1, lines 182-3

Judge a man's character by what he finds ridiculous.