Taste is only to be educated by contemplation, not of the tolerably good but of the truly excellent. I therefore show you only the best works; and when you are grounded in these, you will have a standard for the rest, which you will know how to value, without overrating them.
Johann Wolfgang von GoetheSome people spend the day in complaining of a headache, and the night in drinking the wine that gives it.
Johann Wolfgang von GoetheTo measure up to all that is demanded of him, a man must overestimate his capacities
Johann Wolfgang von GoetheYou will find the most pronounced hatred of other nations on the lowest cultural levels. There is, though, a level where the hatred disappears completely and where one so to speak stands above the nations and where one experiences fortune or misfortune of a neighboring country as if they had happened to one's own.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe