If you are convinced of a matter, you must take sides or you don't deserve to succeed.
Johann Wolfgang von GoetheHe who serves the public is a poor animal; he worries himself to death and no one thanks him for it.
Johann Wolfgang von GoetheThe theater has often been at variance with the pulpit; they ought not to quarrel. How much is it to be wished that in both the celebration of nature and of God were intrusted to none but men of noble minds.
Johann Wolfgang von GoetheIt is quite beyond me how anyone can believe God speaks to us in books and stories. If the world does not directly reveal to us our relationship to it, if our hearts fail to tell us what we owe ourselves and others, we shall assuredly not learn it from books, which are at best designed but to give names to our errors.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe