The mark of highest originality lies in the ability to develop a familiar idea so fruitfully that it would seem no one else would ever have discovered so much to be hidden in it.

What am I then...? Everything that I have seen, heard, and observed I have collected and exploited. My works have been nourished by countless different individuals, by innocent and wise ones, people of intelligence and dunces. Childhood, maturity and old age all have brought me their thoughts....their perspectives on life. I have often reaped what others have sowed. My work is the work of a collective being that bears the name Goethe.

I don't know a greater advantage, than to appreciate the worth of an enemy.

I call architecture frozen music.

The ideal of beauty is simplicity and tranquility.

How many years you have to keep on doing, until you know what to do and how to do!

A human being needs only a small plot of ground on which to be happy, and even less to lie beneath.