Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe Quotes

In politics as on a sickbed men toss from side to side in hope of lying more comfortably.

Treat a person as they are, they will remain so. Treat a person the way that person can be and is capable of being and that person will become as he or she can be and should be.

God could cause us considerable embarrassment by revealing all the secrets of nature to us: we should not know what to do for sheer apathy and boredom.

The soul of the Christian religion is reverence.

Ye great teachers: listen to what you say!

The dear good people don't know how long it takes to learn to read. I've been at it eighty years, and can't say yet that I've reached the goal.

Nothing is more consonant with Nature than that she puts into operation in the smallest detail that which she intends as a whole.

If ever the Divine appeared on earth, it was in the person of Christ.

One never learns to understand truly anything but what one loves.

One lives but once in the world.

The greatest genius will not be worth much if he pretends to draw exclusively from his own resources

Where a man has a passion for meditating without the capacity of thinking, a particular idea fixes itself fast, and soon creates a mental disease.

Woe to him who would ascribe something like reason to Chance, and make a religion of surrendering to it.

There is no permanence in doubt; it incites the mind to closer inquiry and experiment, from which, if rightly managed, certainty proceeds, and in this alone can man find thorough satisfaction.

Whether one show one's self a man of genius in science or compose a song, the only point is, whether the thought, the discovery, the deed, is living and can live on.

Mathematics can remove no prejudices and soften no obduracy. It has no influence in sweetening the bitter strife of parties, and in the moral world generally its action is perfectly null.

If the world does improve on the whole, yet youth must always begin anew, and go through the stages of culture from the beginning.

The spectacle of Nature is always new, for she is always renewing the spectators. Life is her most exquisite invention; and death is her expert contrivance to get plenty of life.

Time does not relinquish its rights, either over human beings or over mountains.

One must keep repeating the Truth.

Then to the depths! - I could as well say height: It's all the same.

Human life-everybody lives it, but only to a few is it known.

Nature reacts not only to physical disease, but also to moral weakness; when the danger increases; she gives us greater courage

The history of science is science itself; the history of the individual, the individual.

It is related of an Englishman that he hanged himself to avoid the daily task of dressing and undressing.

Whoever strikes at marriage either by word or act undermines the foundation of all moral society.

We talk too much. We should talk less and draw more.

Seize this very minute. What you can do or dream you can do, begin it. Begin it and the work will be completed

One must be something, in order to do something.

Our earthly ball a peopled garden.

Cursed Mammon be, when he with treasures To restless action spurs our fate! Cursed when for soft, indulgent leisures, He lays for us the pillows straight.

Great necessity elevates man, petty necessity casts him down

Blood is a juice of rarest quality. [Ger., Blut ist ein ganz beondrer Saft.]

Every individual who is not creative has a negative, narrow, exclusive taste and succeeds in depriving creative being of its energy and life.

I reverence the individual who understands distinctly what he wishes; who unweariedly advances, who knows the means conducive to his object, and can seize and use them.

Whoever would understand the poet Must go into the poet's country. [Ger., Wer den Dichter will verstehen Muss in Dichters Lande gehen.]

As a man is, so is his God; therefore God was so often an object of mockery. [Ger., Wie einer ist, so ist sein Gott, Darum ward Gott so oft zu Spott.]

Wouldst thou ever roam abroad? See, what is good lies by thy side. Only learn to catch happiness, for happiness is ever by you.

All rights and laws are still transmitted, Like an eternal sickness to the race. [Ger., Es erben sich Gesetz and Rechte Wie eine ew'ge Krankheit fort.]

Errors belong to libraries; truth, to the human mind.

Literature is a fragment of a fragment. Of all that ever happened, or has been said, but a fraction has been written; and of this but little is extant.

Where confidence is wanting, the most beautiful flower in the garland of love is missing.

Beloved brother, let us not forget that man can never get away from himself. [Ger., Lass uns, geliebter Bruder, nicht vergessen, Dass von sich selbst der Mensch nicht scheiden kann.]

For a brave man deserves a well-endowed girl. [Ger., Denn ein wackerer Mann verdient ein begutertes Madchen.]

The passions are like those demons with which Afrasahiab sailed down the Orus. Our only safety consists in keeping them asleep. If they we are lost.

What have the Germans gained by their boasted freedom of the press, except the liberty of abusing each other as they like?

Care is taken that trees do not grow into the sky. [Ger., Es ist dafur gesorgt, dass die Baume nicht in den Himmel wachsen.]

There is but one poetry,--true poetry.

It would not be worth your while to reach the age of seventy if all the wisdom of the world were to be foolishness before God.

Neither a work of nature nor one of art we get to know when they have been finished; we must surprise them in the process of beingcreated so as to understand them to some degree.