Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe Quotes

The credit of advancing science has always been due to individuals and never to the age.

If you modestly enjoy your fame you are not unworthy to rank with the holy.

A noble soul alone can noble souls attract; And knows alone, as ye, to hold them.

The universal subjugator, the commonplace.

The mortal race is far too weak not to grow dizzy on unwonted brights.

The decline in literature indicates a decline in the nation. The two keep pace in their downward tendency.

The history of mankind is his character.

Whoso is content with pure experience and acts upon it has enough of truth.

The man who masters himself is delivered from the force that binds all creatures.

The confidant of my vices is my master, though he were my valet.

When an idea is wanting, a word can always be found to take its place.

Several classical sayings that one likes to repeat had quite a different meaning from the ones later times attributed to them.

How marvelous, wide and broad is my Inheritance! Time is my property, my estate is time.

No skill or art is needed to grow old; the trick is to endure it.

The clever reader who is capable or reading between these lines what does not stand written in them but is nevertheless implied will be able to form some conception.

I will listen to anyone's convictions, but pray keep your doubts to yourself.

Character calls forth character.

If you have a great work in your head, nothing else thrives near it; all other thoughts are repelled, and the pleasure of life itself is for the time lost.

I have heard myself accused of being an opponent, an enemy of mathematics, which no one can value more highly than I, for it accomplishes the very thing whose achievement has been denied me.

True happiness springs from moderation. [Ger., Aus Massigkeit entspringt ein reines Gluck.]

To be sure, a good work of art can and will have moral consequences, but to demand of the artists moral intentions, means ruiningtheir craft.

All of us, just because we are able to talk, also believe we are able to talk about language.

Nature is, after all, the only book that offers important content on every page.

Yes, my love, who soever lives, loses, . . . but he also wins. [Ger., Ja, meine Liebe, wer lebt, verliebt . . . aber er gewinnt auch.]

Always to distrust is an error, as well as always to trust.

Since I have heard often enough that everyone in the end has his own religion, nothing seemed more natural to me than to fashion my own.

No sacred fane requires us to submit to insult.

And here, poor fool, with all my lore I stand no wiser than before.

A good man, through obscurest aspirations Has still an instinct of the one true way.

All sects seem to me to be right in what they assert, and wrong in what they deny.

Thou must (in commanding and winning, or serving and losing, suffering or triumphing) be either anvil or hammer.

Duty is the demand of the hour.

There are men who never err, because they never propose anything rational.

But what is your duty? What the day demands. [Ger., Was aber ist deine Pflicht? Die Forderung des Tages.]

To appear at church every Sunday; to look down upon, and let himself be looked at for an hour by the congregation, is the best means of becoming popular which can be recommended to a young sovereign.

Poor fool! in whose petty estimation all things are little.

What reason would grope for in vain, spontaneous impulse ofttimes achieves at a stroke, with light and pleasureful guidance.

A noble man is led far by woman's gentle words. [Ger., Ein edler Mann wird durch ein gutes Wort Der Frauen weit gefuhrt.]

I do not speak of what I cannot praise.

In the end we retain from our studies only that which we practically apply.

We will burn that bridge when we come to it.

Love can do much, but duty more.

An angel! Nonsense! Everybody so describes his mistress; and yet I find it impossible to tell you how perfect she is, or why she is so perfect: suffice it to say she has captivated all my senses.

No one as ever completed their apprenticeship.

We amuse ourselves painting our prison-walls with bright figures and brilliant landscapes.

Men are joined by conviction, sundered by opinion.

The fate of the architect is the strangest of all. How often he expends his whole soul, his whole heart and passion, to produce buildings into which he himself may never enter.

The smallest hair throws its shadow. [Ger., Das kleinste Harr wirft seinen Schatten.]

Courage and modesty are the most unequivocal of virtues, for they are of a kind that hypocrisy cannot imitate; they too have this quality in common, that they are expressed by the same color.

For the nature of women is closely allied to art