Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Quotes

» Everybody wants to be somebody; nobody wants to grow.

» He is happiest, be he king or peasant, who finds peace in his home.

» There is nothing in which people more betray their character than in what they laugh at.

» A clever man commits no minor blunders.

» The soul that sees beauty may sometimes walk alone.

» If God had wanted me otherwise, He would have created me otherwise.

» All the knowledge I possess everyone else can acquire, but my heart is all my own.

» 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.

» To rule is easy, to govern difficult.

» One must ask children and birds how cherries and strawberries taste.

» If children grew up according to early indications, we should have nothing but geniuses.

» Nothing is worth more than this day.

» Few people have the imagination for reality.

» Every author in some way portrays himself in his works, even if it be against his will.

» I call architecture frozen music.

» Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it.

» I can tell you, honest friend, what to believe: believe life; it teaches better that book or orator.

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

» To appreciate the noble is a gain which can never be torn from us.

» Every step of life shows much caution is required.

» Precaution is better than cure.

» The coward only threatens when he is safe.

» Death is a commingling of eternity with time; in the death of a good man, eternity is seen looking through time.

» Love and desire are the spirit's wings to great deeds.

» The most happy man is he who knows how to bring into relation the end and beginning of his life.

» For a man to achieve all that is demanded of him he must regard himself as greater than he is.

» If you wish to know the mind of a man, listen to his words.

» Life is the childhood of our immortality.

» I think that I am better than the people who are trying to reform me.

» One always has time enough, if one will apply it well.

» Devote each day to the object then in time and every evening will find something done.

» Nothing is more fearful than imagination without taste.

» Fresh activity is the only means of overcoming adversity.

» Talk well of the absent whenever you have the opportunity.

» The deed is everything, the glory is naught.

» The person born with a talent they are meant to use will find their greatest happiness in using it.

» We will burn that bridge when we come to it.

» Thinking is easy, acting is difficult, and to put one's thoughts into action is the most difficult thing in the world.

» Character develops itself in the stream of life.

» Dream no small dreams for they have no power to move the hearts of men.

» Correction does much, but encouragement does more.

» We don't get to know people when they come to us; we must go to them to find out what they are like.

» First and last, what is demanded of genius is love of truth.

» A noble person attracts noble people, and knows how to hold on to them.

» Just trust yourself, then you will know how to live.

» Live dangerously and you live right.

» On all the peaks lies peace.

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

» A correct answer is like an affectionate kiss.

» For just when ideas fail, a word comes in to save the situation.

» The right man is the one who seizes the moment.

» Life belongs to the living, and he who lives must be prepared for changes.

» It is better to be deceived by one's friends than to deceive them.

» Nothing shows a man's character more than what he laughs at.

» No one would talk much in society if they knew how often they misunderstood others.

» Mysteries are not necessarily miracles.

» Being brilliant is no great feat if you respect nothing.

» Let everyone sweep in front of his own door, and the whole world will be clean.

» A really great talent finds its happiness in execution.

» As soon as you trust yourself, you will know how to live.

» None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free.

» The intelligent man finds almost everything ridiculous, the sensible man hardly anything.

» The mediator of the inexpressible is the work of art.

» We can't form our children on our own concepts; we must take them and love them as God gives them to us.

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

» Whatever you cannot understand, you cannot possess.

» All things are only transitory.

» I do not know myself, and God forbid that I should.

» If a man writes a book, let him set down only what he knows. I have guesses enough of my own.

» It is not doing the thing we like to do, but liking the thing we have to do, that makes life blessed.

» Age merely shows what children we remain.

» Destiny grants us our wishes, but in its own way, in order to give us something beyond our wishes.

» The artist alone sees spirits. But after he has told of their appearing to him, everybody sees them.

» A man's manners are a mirror in which he shows his portrait.

» The man with insight enough to admit his limitations comes nearest to perfection.

» He only earns his freedom and his life Who takes them every day by storm.

» If you start to think of your physical and moral condition, you usually find that you are sick.

» Girls we love for what they are; young men for what they promise to be.

» Love does not dominate; it cultivates.

» To witness two lovers is a spectacle for the gods.

» The people who are absent are the ideal; those who are present seem to be quite commonplace.

» Character is formed in the stormy billows of the world.

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

» Men show their character in nothing more clearly than what they think laughable.

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

» He who enjoys doing and enjoys what he has done is happy.

» What life half gives a man, posterity gives entirely.

» Personality is everything in art and poetry.

» The biggest problem with every art is by the use of appearance to create a loftier reality.

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

» Beauty is everywhere a welcome guest.

» Behavior is the mirror in which everyone shows their image.

» He is dead in this world who has no belief in another.

» If you must tell me your opinions, tell me what you believe in. I have plenty of doubts of my own.

» Nothing is more terrible than to see ignorance in action.

» The Christian religion, though scattered and abroad will in the end gather itself together at the foot of the cross.

» Common sense is the genius of humanity.

» Who is the most sensible person? The one who finds what is to their own advantage in all that happens to them.

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

» To create something you must be something.

» A useless life is an early death.

» Unlike grown ups, children have little need to deceive themselves.

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

» We know accurately only when we know little, with knowledge doubt increases.

» Love can do much, but duty more.

» He who does not think much of himself is much more esteemed than he imagines.

» Mastery passes often for egotism.

» Certain defects are necessary for the existence of individuality.

» It is the strange fate of man, that even in the greatest of evils the fear of the worst continues to haunt him.

» Do not give in too much to feelings. A overly sensitive heart is an unhappy possession on this shaky earth.

» It seems to never occur to fools that merit and good fortune are closely united.

» What by a straight path cannot be reached by crooked ways is never won.

» Happiness is a ball after which we run wherever it rolls, and we push it with our feet when it stops.

» Hatred is active, and envy passive dislike; there is but one step from envy to hate.

» Hatred is something peculiar. You will always find it strongest and most violent where there is the lowest degree of culture.

» Those who hope for no other life are dead even for this.

» Objects in pictures should so be arranged as by their very position to tell their own story.

» There is nothing more frightful than imagination without taste.

» Letters are among the most significant memorial a person can leave behind them.

» There is nothing in the world more shameful than establishing one's self on lies and fables.

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

» What is important in life is life, and not the result of life.

» A person hears only what they understand.

» The unnatural, that too is natural.

» Passions are vices or virtues to their highest powers.

» Superstition is the poetry of life.

» The little man is still a man.

» The human mind will not be confined to any limits.

» What is not started today is never finished tomorrow.

» If a man or woman is born ten years sooner or later, their whole aspect and performance shall be different.

» To hard necessity ones will and fancy must conform.

» He who has a task to perform must know how to take sides, or he is quite unworthy of it.

» Upon the creatures we have made, we are, ourselves, at last, dependent.

» Deeply earnest and thoughtful people stand on shaky footing with the public.

» Be above it! Make the world serve your purpose, but do not serve it.

» Every person above the ordinary has a certain mission that they are called to fulfill.

» To the person with a firm purpose all men and things are servants.

» What is my life if I am no longer useful to others.

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

» No one has ever learned fully to know themselves.

» A person places themselves on a level with the ones they praise.

» Trust yourself, then you will know how to live.

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

» Self-knowledge comes from knowing other men.

» Talent develops in quiet places, character in the full current of human life.

» Thinking is more interesting than knowing, but less interesting than looking.

» Nothing is to be rated higher than the value of the day.

» We always have time enough, if we will but use it aright.

» Who is the wisest man? He who neither knows or wishes for anything else than what happens.

» Wisdom is found only in truth.

» We are never further from what we wish than when we believe that we have what we wished for.

» Be generous with kindly words, especially about those who are absent.

» Every spoken word arouses our self-will.

» The world remains ever the same.

» All theory, dear friend, is gray, but the golden tree of life springs ever green.

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

» Ignorant men raise questions that wise men answered a thousand years ago.

» Nature knows no pause in progress and development, and attaches her curse on all inaction.

» In art the best is good enough.

» Everything in the world may be endured except continual prosperity.

» Knowing is not enough; we must apply. Willing is not enough; we must do.

» When ideas fail, words come in very handy.

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

» The decline of literature indicates the decline of a nation.

» Magic is believing in yourself, if you can do that, you can make anything happen.

» An unused life is an early death.

» It is in self-limitation that a master first shows himself.

» There is a courtesy of the heart; it is allied to love. From its springs the purest courtesy in the outward behavior.

» We are never deceived; we deceive ourselves.

» All intelligent thoughts have already been thought; what is necessary is only to try to think them again.

» Wood burns because it has the proper stuff in it; and a man becomes famous because he has the proper stuff in him.

» We cannot fashion our children after our desires, we must have them and love them as God has given them to us.

» Sowing is not as difficult as reaping.

» The best government is that which teaches us to govern ourselves.

» Whoever wishes to keep a secret must hide the fact that he possesses one.

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

» The hardest thing to see is what is in front of your eyes.

» In the realm of ideas everything depends on enthusiasm... in the real world all rests on perseverance.

» The deed is everything, the glory naught.

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

» None are so hopelessly enslaved as those who falsely believe they are free.

» Science arose from poetry... when times change the two can meet again on a higher level as friends.

» I love those who yearn for the impossible.

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

» Doubt grows with knowledge.

» There is nothing so terrible as activity without insight.

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

» What is uttered from the heart alone, Will win the hearts of others to your own.

» All the knowledge I possess everyone else can acquire, but my heart is exclusively my own.

» He who possesses art and science has religion; he who does not possess them, needs religion.

» It is after all the greatest art to limit and isolate oneself.

» Only by joy and sorrow does a person know anything about themselves and their destiny. They learn what to do and what to avoid.

» 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.

» We usually lose today, because there has been a yesterday, and tomorrow is coming.

» In nature we never see anything isolated, but everything in connection with something else which is before it, beside it, under it and over it.

» Every day we should hear at least one little song, read one good poem, see one exquisite picture, and, if possible, speak a few sensible words.

» Go to foreign countries and you will get to know the good things one possesses at home.

» Which government is the best? The one that teaches us to govern ourselves.

» Piety is not a goal but a means to attain through the purest peace of mind the highest culture.

» There is nothing insignificant in the world. It all depends on the point of view.

» Error is acceptable as long as we are young; but one must not drag it along into old age.

» Music is either sacred or secular. The sacred agrees with its dignity, and here has its greatest effect on life, an effect that remains the same through all ages and epochs. Secular music should be cheerful throughout.

» I never knew a more presumptuous person than myself. The fact that I say that shows that what I say is true.

» Great thoughts and a pure heart, that is what we should ask from God.

» One cannot develop taste from what is of average quality but only from the very best.

Who Said It?

Who Said: "I've become wary of interviews in which you're forced to go back over the reasons why you made certain decisions. You tend to rationalize what you've done, to intellectually review a process that is often intuitive." Click To See

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"I was five years old when I wrote my first song. It was out of longing for my father that I wrote it." - Shmuel Y. Agnon

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