Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe Quotes

A flippant, frivolous man may ridicule others, may controvert them, scorn them; but he who has any respect for himself seems to have renounced the right of thinking meanly of others.

In art, the best is good enough.

Patriotism ruins history.

Willing is not enough, we must do.

As man is, so is his God. And thus is God oft strangely odd.

The mark of highest originality lies in the ability to develop a familiar idea so fruitfully that it would seem no one else would ever have discovered so much to be hidden in it.

Everybody wants to be somebody; nobody wants to grow.

One errs as long as one strives.

Fresh activity is the only means of overcoming adversity.

Daring ideas are like chessmen moved forward; they may be beaten, but they may start a winning game.

Higher aims are in themselves more valuable, even if unfulfilled, than lower ones quite attained.

The rich want good wine, the poor, plenty of wine

To understand one thing well is better than understanding many things by halves.

Human life runs its course in the metamorphosis between receiving and giving.

A creation of importance can only be produced when its author isolates himself, it is a child of solitude.

God help us -- for art is long, and life so short.

The most original of authors are not so because they advance what is new, but more because they know how to say something, as if it had never been said before.

The connoisseur of art must be able to appreciate what is simply beautiful, but the common run of people is satisfied with ornament.

You must either conquer and rule or serve and lose, suffer or triumph, be the anvil or the hammer.

Love of truth shows itself in this, that a man knows how to find and value the good in everything.

All beginnings are delightful; the threshold is the place to pause.

People have a peculiar pleasure in making converts, that is, in causing others to enjoy what they enjoy, thus finding their own likeness represented and reflected back to them.

Plunge boldly into the thick of life!

A great scholar is seldom a great philosopher.

Beauty is everywhere a welcome guest.

Where is the man who has the strength to be true, and to show himself as he is?

Enjoy what you can, endure what you must.

The threshold is the place of expectation.

Wisdom is only found in truth. [Ger., Die Weisheit ist nur in der Wahrheit.]

It matters little whether a man be mathematically or philologically or artistically cultivated, so he be but cultivated.

The unnatural, that too is natural.

They should be ashamed of themselves, all these sober people!

The decline of literature indicates the decline of a nation.

Common sense is the genius of humanity.

Beware of her fair hair, for she excels All women in the magic of her locks; And when she winds them round a young man's neck, She will not ever set him free again.

Everything great and intelligent is in the minority

The formation of one's character ought to be everyone's chief aim.

If your treat an individual... as if he were what he ought to be and could be, he will become what he ought to be and could be.

But when all is said, the greatest art is to limit and isolate oneself.

Every man has enough power left to carry out that of which he is convinced.

What people call the spirit of the times is mostly their own spirit in which the times mirror themselves.

As in Rome there is, apart from the Romans, a population of statues, so apart from this real world there is a world of illusion, almost more potent, in which most men live.

I let everyone follow his own bent, that I may be free to follow mine.

Correction does much, but encouragement does more. Encouragement after censure is as the sun after a shower.

There is no surer method of evading the world than by following Art, and no surer method of linking oneself to it than by Art.

It is easier to perceive error than to find truth, for the former lies on the surface and is easily seen, while the latter lies in the depth, where few are willing to search for it.

Nothing is true, but that which is simple.

One never goes so far as when one doesn't know where one is going.

How can we know ourselves? Never by reflection, but only through action. Begin at once to do your duty and immediately you will know what is inside you.

Culture which smooth the whole world licks, Also unto the devil sticks.