Alas, I have studied philosophy, the law as well as medicine, and to my sorrow, theology; studied them well with ardent zeal, yet here I am, a wretched fool, no wiser than I was before.
Johann Wolfgang von GoetheThere is nothing by which men display their character so much as in what they consider ridiculous... Fools and sensible men are equally innocuous. It is in the half fools and the half wise that the great danger lies.
Johann Wolfgang von GoetheAll sects seem to me to be right in what they assert, and wrong in what they deny.
Johann Wolfgang von GoetheIt is not doing the thing we like to do, but liking the thing we have to do, that makes life blessed.
Johann Wolfgang von GoetheHe is happy as well as great who needs neither to obey nor to command in order to be something.
Johann Wolfgang von GoetheI am a part of the part that at first was all, part of the darkness that gave birth to the light, that supercilious light which now disputes with Mother Night her ancient rank and space, and yet cannot succeed; no matter how it struggles, it sticks to matter and can't get free. Light flows from substance, makes it beautiful.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe