Great necessity elevates man, petty necessity casts him down

There is not a single outward mark of courtesy that does not have a deep moral basis.

Normally, the sciences distance themselves from life and the return to it via a detour.

Everything factual is, in a sense, theory. The blue of the sky exhibits the basic laws of chromatics. There is no sense in looking for something behind phenomena: they are theory.

It is much easier to meet with error than to find truth; error is on the surface, and can be more easily met with; truth is hid in great depths, the way to seek does not appear to all the world.

Animals, we have been told, are taught by their organs. Yes, I would add, and so are men, but men have this further advantage that they can also teach their organs in return.

I have often reaped what others have sowed. My work is the work of a collective being that bears the name Goethe.