Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Quotes

Passions are vices or virtues to their highest powers.

Look closely at those who patronize you. Half are unfeeling, half untaught.

It is sometimes essential for a husband and a wife to quarrel - they get to know each other better.

Wouldst thou ever roam abroad? See, what is good lies by thy side. Only learn to catch happiness, for happiness is ever by you.

Beauty vanishes; virtue is lasting.

A really great talent finds its happiness in execution.

Why look for conspiracy when stupidity can explain so much

Age merely shows what children we remain.

As to the value of conversions, God alone can judge. God alone can know how wide are the steps which the soul has to take before it can approach to a community with Him, to the dwelling of the perfect, or to the intercourse and friendship of higher natures.

Courage is the commitment to begin without any guarantee of success.

When the healthy nature of man acts as a whole, when he feels himself to be in the world as in a great, beautiful, noble, and valued whole, when harmonious ease affords him a pure and free delight, then the universe, if it could experience itself, would exult, as having attained its goal, and admire the climax of its own becoming and essence.

Just trust yourself and you'll learn the art of living.

The right man is the one who seizes the moment.

Flowers are the beautiful hieroglyphics of nature with which she indicates how much she loves us.

For usually people resist as long as they can to dismiss the fool they harbor in their bosom, they resist to confess a major mistake or to admit a truth that makes them despair.

Sound and sufficient reason falls, after all, to the share of but few men, and those few men exert their influence in silence.

We are shaped and fashioned by what we love

People are always talking about originality, but what do they mean? As soon as we are born, the world begins to work upon us, and this goes on to the end.

Our virtues and view spring from one root.

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

Sing it not in mournful numbers.

Happiness is a ball after which we run wherever it rolls, and we push it with our feet when it stops.

One always has time enough, if one will apply it well.

Kindness is the golden thread that holds society together.

Plunge boldly into the thick of life!

You'll never attain it unless you know the feeling.

Only law can give us freedom.

The art of living rightly is like all arts; it must be learned and practiced with incessant care.

What reason would grope for in vain, spontaneous impulse ofttimes achieves at a stroke, with light and pleasureful guidance.

In all times it is only individuals that have advanced science, not the age.

Austere perseverance, hash and continuous... rarely fails of its purpose, for its silent power grows irresistible greater with time.

All that is noble is in itself of a quiet nature, and appears to sleep until it is aroused and summoned forth by contrast.

A man who cannot command himself will always be a slave.

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

Personality is everything in art and poetry.

That which thy fathers have bequeathed to thee, earn it anew if thou wouldst possess it.

Willing is not enough, we must do.

A talent can be cultivated in tranquility; a character only in the rushing stream of life.

The sum which two married people owe to one another defies calculation. It is an infinite debt, which can only be discharged through all eternity.

Nature is beneficent. I praise her and all her works. She is silent and wise. She is cunning, but for good ends. She has brought me here and will also lead me away. She may scold me, but she will not hate her work. I trust her.

To know someone here or there with whom you can feel there is understanding in spite of distances or thoughts expressed That can make life a garden.

Against criticism a man can neither protest nor defend himself; he must act in spite of it, and then it will gradually yield to him.

Oh God, how do the world and heavens confine themselves, when our hearts tremble in their own barriers!

We all of us live upon the past, and through the past we are destroyed.

Men show their character in nothing more clearly than what they think laughable.

A man would create another man if one did not already exist, but a woman might live an eternity without even thinking of reproducing her own sex.

The hero draws inspiration from the virtue of his ancestors.

A distracted existence leads us to no goal