He who only tastes his error will long dwell with it, will take delight in it as in a singular felicity; while he who drains it to the dregs will, if he be not crazy, find it to be what it is.
Johann Wolfgang von GoetheThe day is committed to error and floundering; success and achievement are matters of long range.
Johann Wolfgang von GoetheOur mistakes and failures are always the first to strike us, and outweigh in our imagination what we have accomplished and attained.
Johann Wolfgang von GoetheIn all things, to serve from the lowest station upwards is necessary. To restrict yourself to a trade is best. For the narrow mind, whatever he attempts is still a trade; for the higher, an art; and the highest in doing one thing does all, or, to speak less paradoxically, in the one thing which he does rightly he sees the likeness of all that is done rightly.
Johann Wolfgang von GoetheSuch is the frailty of man that even where he makes the truest and most forcible impression in the memory, in the heart of his beloved, there also he must perish.
Johann Wolfgang von GoetheSomeday someone will write a pathology of experimental physics and bring to light all those swindles which subvert our reason, beguile our judgement and, what is worse, stand in the way of any practical progress. The phenomena must be freed once and for all from their grim torture chamber of empiricism, mechanism, and dogmatism; they must be brought before the jury of man's common sense.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe