Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Quotes

Thank God when He lays a burden on thee, and thank Him when He takes it off.

Can a sparrow know how a stork feels?

What is fruitful alone is true.

And here, poor fool, with all my lore I stand no wiser than before.

I am very anxious to please the public, particularly as it lives and lets live.

The spectacle of Nature is always new, for she is always renewing the spectators. Life is her most exquisite invention; and death is her expert contrivance to get plenty of life.

What is not fully understood is not possessed.

Time is my estate: to Time I'm heir.

Nature! We live in her midst and know her not. She is incessantly speaking to us, but betrays not her secret. We constantly act upon her, and yet have no power over her. Variant: NATURE! We are surrounded and embraced by her: powerless to separate ourselves from her, and powerless to penetrate beyond her.

And step by step, along the path of life, There's nothing true but Heaven.

Battle not with monsters, for then you become one.

No two men see the world exactly alike, and different temperaments will apply in different ways a principle that they both acknowledge. The same man will, indeed, often see and judge the same things differently on different occasions: early convictions must give way to more mature ones. Nevertheless, may not the opinions that a man holds and expresses withstand all trials, if he only remains true to himself and others?

Beware of dissipating your powers; strive constantly to concentrate them.

Doubt grows with knowledge.

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.

If we meet someone who owes us a debt of gratitude, we remember the fact at once. How often we can meet someone to whom we owe a debt of gratitude without thinking about it at all!

God help us -- for art is long, and life so short.

Must it ever be thus-that the source of our happiness must also be the fountain of our misery? The full and ardent sentiment which animated my heart with the love of nature, overwhelming me with a torrent of delight, and which brought all paradise before me, has now become an insupportable torment, a demon which perpetually pursues and harrasses me.

If society gives up the right to impose the death penalty, then self-help will appear again and personal vendettas will be around the corner.

Nothing is more terrible than to see ignorance in action.

There is no past we can bring back by longing for it. There is only an eternal now that builds and creates out of the past something new and better.

Doesn't surprise me that Christ our Lord preferred to live with whores and sinners, seeing I go in for that myself.

Happy is it, indeed, for me that my heart is capable of feeling the same simple and innocent pleasure as the peasant whose table is covered with food of his own rearing, and who not only enjoys his meal, but remembers with delight the happy days and sunny mornings when he planted it, the soft evenings when he watered it, and the pleasure he experienced in watching its daily growth.

All our knowledge is symbolic.

Someone criticized an elderly man for wooing young women. He replied that that was the only way to rejuvenation, which was, afterall, everybody's wish.

Higher aims are in themselves more valuable, even if unfulfilled, than lower ones quite attained.

He who would reproach an author for obscurity should look into his own mind to see whether it is quite clear there. In the dusk the plainest writing is illegible.

Hatred is a heavy burden. It sinks the heart deep in the breast, and lies like a tombstone on all joys.

One cannot always be a hero, but one can always be a man.

There is nothing in the world more pitiable than an irresolute man, oscillating between two feelings, who would willingly unite the two and who does not perceive that nothing can unite them

Where there are no women there are no good manners

Assuredly there is no more lovely worship of God than that for which no image is required, but which springs up in our breast spontaneously when nature speaks to the soul, and the soul speaks to nature face to face.

Few men have imagination enough for reality.

It is not doing the thing we like to do, but liking the thing we have to do, that makes life blessed.

Mozart is a human incarnation of the divine force of creation.

Unlike grown ups, children have little need to deceive themselves.

The universal subjugator, the commonplace.

Beauty is a primeval phenomenon, which itself never makes its appearance, but the reflection of which is visible in a thousand different utterances of the creative mind, and is as various as nature herself.

The Woman-Soul leadeth us upward and on!

A lot of people do not care about your money until nearly penniless. They also do so with time

It is opposition that makes us productive.

Lord Byron is only great as a poet; as soon as he reflects he is a child.

There are people who make no mistakes because they never wish to do anything worth doing.

You can easily judge the character of a man by how he treats those who can do nothing for him.

Napoleon for the sake of a good name broke in pieces half the world.

Divide and rule, a sound motto. Unite and lead, a better one.

The best pleasures of this world are not quite true.

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.