Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe Quotes

Sometimes our fate resembles a fruit tree in winter. Who would think that those branches would turn green again and blossom, but we hope it, we know it.

Plunge boldly into the thick of life, and seize it where you will, it is always interesting.

The soul that sees beauty may sometimes walk alone.

Lord Byron is only great as a poet; as soon as he reflects he is a child.

Wisdom is found only in truth.

To witness two lovers is a spectacle for the gods.

The ideal of beauty is simplicity and tranquility.

We are shaped and fashioned by what we love

Beauty is a manifestation of secret natural laws, which otherwise would have been hidden from us forever.

Our passions are the true phoenixes; when the old one is burnt out, a new one rises from its ashes.

Progress has not followed a straight ascending line, but a spiral with rhythms of progress and retrogression, of evolution and dissolution.

To think is easy. To act is difficult. To act as one thinks is the most difficult.

One can be instructed in society, one is inspired only in solitude.

The man of understanding finds everything laughable.

As long as you are not aware of the continual law of Die and Be Again, you are merely a vague guest on a dark Earth.

People of uncommon abilities generally fall into eccentricities when their sphere of life is not adequate to their abilities.

Good children's literature appeals not only to the child in the adult, but to the adult in the child.

Yet through delivery orators succeed, I feel that I am far behind indeed. [Ger., Allein der Vortrag macht des Redners Gluck, Ich fuhl es wohl noch bin ich weit zuruck.]

Master and Doctor are my titles; for ten years now, without repose, I held my erudite recitals and led my pupils by the nose.

What makes people happy is activity; changing evil itself into good by power, working in a God like manner.

Great endowments often announce themselves in youth in the form of singularity and awkwardness.

Once you have missed the first buttonhole, you'll never manage to button up.

Oblivion is full of people who allow the opinions of others to overrule their belief in themselves.

Sin writes histories, goodness is silent.

Divide and rule, the politician cries; unite and lead, is watchword of the wise.

All truly wise thoughts have been thought already thousands of times; but to make them truly ours, we must think them over again honestly, until they take root in our personal experience.

Very few people love others for what they are; rather, they love what they lend them, their own selves, their own idea of them.

Tell me with whom you associate, and I will tell you who you are.

A great revolution is never the fault of the people, but of the government.

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

Love does not rule; but it trains, and that is more.

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

Man is made by his belief. As he believes, so he is.

The more one knows, the more one comprehends, the more one realizes that everything turns in a circle.

Few people have the imagination for reality.

Belief is not the beginning of knowledge - it is the end.

Life is too short to drink bad wine.

What is hardest of all? That which seems most simple: to see with your eyes what is before your eyes.

There are two things children should get from their parents: roots and wings.

True love is love that stays constant for ever, whatever it's fortune; whether requited or scored, filled or sent empty away.

If I love you, what business is it of yours?

We must be young to do great things.

Mankind? That is an abstraction. There have always been and always will be only individuals.

Rest not. Life is sweeping by; go and dare before you die. Something mighty and sublime, leave behind to conquer time.

Know thyself? If I knew myself I would run away.

Where there is much light, the shadows are deepest. [Ger., Wo viel Licht is, ist starker Schatten.]

Investigate what is, and not what pleases.

It is ever true that he who does nothing for others, does nothing for himself." ~ Goethe

A man's foibles are what makes him lovable.

Many people take no care of their money till they come nearly to the end of it, and others do just the same with their time.