Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe Quotes

At bottom, no real object is unpoetical, if the poet knows how to use it properly.

If a poet would work politically, he must give himself up to a party; and so soon as he does that, he is lost as a poet.

Poetry is the universal possession of mankind, revealing itself everywhere, and at all times, in hundreds and hundreds of men.

What is the freedom of the most free? To do what is right!

As soon as any one belongs to a narrow creed in science, every unprejudiced and true perception is gone.

Who strives always to the utmost, him can we save.

He is a man whom it is impossible to please, because he is never pleased with himself.

One says a lot in vain, refusing; The other mainly hears the "No."

The Evil One has left, the evil ones remain.

Presents at once? That's good. He is sure to succeed.

How happy he who can still hope to lift himself from this sea of error! What we know not, that we are anxious to possess, and cannot use what we know.

What sort of faults may we retain, nay, even cherish in ourselves? Those faults which are rather pleasant than offensive to others.

To a valet no man is a hero. [Ger., Es gibt fur den Kammerdiener keiner Helden.]

I have observed that as long as one lives and bestirs himself, he can always find food and raiment, though it may not be of the choicest description.

When toward the Devil's Hose we tread, Woman's a thousand steps behind. [Ger., Denn geht es zu des Bosen Haus Das Weib hat tausend Schritt voraus.]

Man usually believes, if only words he hears, That also with them goes material for thinking. [Ger., Gewohnlich glaubt der Mensch, wenn er nur Worte hort, Es musse sich dabei doch auch was denken.]

The rabble also vent their rage in words. [Ger., Es macht das Volk sich auch mit Worten Lust.]

Rash, inexperienced youth holds itself a chosen instrument, and allows itself unbounded license.

Ah, how often I've cursed those foolish pages, That showed my youthful sufferings to everyone! If Werther had been my brother, and I'd killed him, His sad ghost could hardly have persecuted me more.

With knowledge comes more doubt.

The ground that a good man treads is hallowed.

There is nothing in life so irrational, that good sense and chance may not set it to rights; nothing so rational, that folly and chance may not utterly confound it.

If you have science and art, You also have religion; But if you don't have them, You better have religion.

For that is love's nature that it lays claim to exclusive right and that all other claims are nil.

Mastery is proven only in limitation, and law alone can give us freedom.

Certain faults are necessary for the existence of the individual. We would resent it if old friends were to get rid of certain peculiarities.

If one doesn't know one's own country, one doesn't have standards for foreign countries.

When married one has to get into an argument once in a while since in this way one learns about the other.

Are we not also married to conscience which we would love to get rid of often enough since it is more bothersome than a man or a woman ever could become?

One must not criticize that which is common since it remains always the same.

For usually people resist as long as they can to dismiss the fool they harbor in their bosom, they resist to confess a major mistake or to admit a truth that makes them despair.

As soon as you are in a social setting, you better take away the key to the lock of your heart and pocket it; those who leave thekey in the lock are fools.

One needs only to get old to become milder; I don't see anyone make a mistake I hadn't also made.

Even the lowliest, provided he is whole, can be happy, and in his own . way, perfect.

Oh God, how do the world and heavens confine themselves, when our hearts tremble in their own barriers!

Character, in great and little things, means carrying through what you feel able to do.

The man who occupies the first place seldom plays the principal part.

I wait for the morning of my tears

The highest goal that man can achieve is amazement.

A word spoken is a terrible thing when it suddenly utters what the heart has long allowed.

Colors are the deeds/ and sufferings of light.

One should not search for anything behind the phenomena. They themselves are the message.

When scholars study a thing, they strive to kill it first, if it's alive; then they have the parts and the'be lost the whole, for the link that's missing was the living soul.

If you don't feel it, you'll never achieve it.

We all of us live upon the past, and through the past we are destroyed.

There is no past we can bring back by longing for it. There is only an eternal now that builds and creates out of the past something new and better.

When she sees the leaves fall, they raise no other idea in her mind than that winter is approaching.

How many kings are governed by their ministers, how many ministers by their secretaries? Who, in such cases, is really the chief?

What a torment it is to see so much loveliness passing and repassing before us, and yet not dare to lay hold of it!

Die Zeit ist selbst ein Element. Time is itself an element.