If in the infinite you want to stride, Just walk in the finite to every side.

The sun had, in the meanwhile, sunk behind the Ettersberg. We felt in the wood the chill of the evening, and drove all the quicker to Wiemar, and to Goethe's house. Goethe urged me to go in with him for a while, and I did so. He was in an extremely engaging mood. He talked a great deal about his theory of colors, and of his obstinate opponents; remarking that he was sure that he had done something in this science.

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

I have come to the frightening conclusion that I am the decisive element. It is my personal approach that creates the climate. It is my daily mood that makes the weather....In all situations, it is my response that decides whether a crisis is escalated or de-escalated, and a person is humanized or is dehumanized.

Most men, even the most accomplished, are of limited faculties; every one sets a value on certain qualities in himself and others: these alone he is willing to favour, these alone will he have cultivated.

And we went our separate ways without having understood each other. As in this world nobody understands the other easily.

You don't love if you don't take the beloved's faults for virtues.