Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Quotes

A man may twist as he pleases, and do what he pleases, but he inevitably comes back to the track to which nature has destined him.

Enjoy when you can, and endure when you must.

A person hears only what they understand.

The flowers of life are but visionary. How many pass away and leave no trace behind! How few yield any fruit,--and the fruit itself, how rarely does it ripen! And yet there are flowers enough; and is it not strange, my friend, that we should suffer the little that does really ripen to rot, decay, and perish unenjoyed?

[W]hat counts is that one perceives excellence and dares to give it expression, which sounds little but is in fact a great deal.

Happy contractedness of youth, nay, of mankind in general, that they think neither of the high nor the deep, of the true nor the false, but only of what is suited to their own conceptions.

National literature does not mean much these days; now is the age of world literature, and every one must contribute to hasten thearrival of that age.

Men are much more apt to agree in what they do than in what they think.

Does not man lack the force at the very point where he needs it most? And when he soars upward in joy, or sinks down in suffering, is not checked in both, is he not returned again to the dull, cold sphere of awareness, just when he was longing to lose himself in the fullness of the infinite.

The effects of good music are not just because it's new; on the contrary music strikes us more the more familiar we are with it.

We are the slaves of objects around us, and appear little or important according as these contract or give us room to expand.

English plays, Atrocious in content, Absurd in form, Objectionable in action, Execrable EnglishTheatre.

A man's shortcomings are taken from his epoch; his virtues and greatness belong to himself.

If you treat men the way they are you never improve them. If you treat them the way you want them to be, you do.

When translating one must proceed up to the intranslatable; only then one becomes aware of the foreign nation and the foreign tongue.

Collectors are happy people.

I never knew a more presumptuous person than myself. The fact that I say that shows that what I say is true.

The history of a man is in his character.

The fate of the architect is the strangest of all. How often he expends his whole soul, his whole heart and passion, to produce buildings into which he himself may never enter.

We gladly put antiquity above our age but not posterity. Only a father doesn't begrudge his son's talent.

I have never looked at foreign countries or gone there but with the purpose of getting to know the general human qualities that are spread all over the earth in very different forms, and then to find these qualities again in my own country and to recognize and to further them.

Whoever strenuously endeavors, him we can rescue.

Certain defects are necessary for the existence of individuality.

All beginnings are delightful; the threshold is the place to pause.

Oh how sweet it is to hear one's own convictions from another's lips.

True works of art contain their own theory and give us the measurement according to which we should judge them.

The beautiful is a phenomenon which is never apparent of itself, but is reflected in a thousand different works of the creator.

What is not started today is never finished tomorrow.

Idea and experience will never coincide in the center; only through art and action are they united.

Stones are mute teachers; they silence the observer, and the most valuable lesson we learn from them we cannot communicate.

Once you have missed the first buttonhole, you'll never manage to button up.

What you have inherited from your fathers, earn over again for yourselves, or it will not be yours.

I let everyone follow his own bent, that I may be free to follow mine.

If a man or woman is born ten years sooner or later, their whole aspect and performance shall be different.

Mountains cannot be surmounted except by winding paths.

The assault of our enemies is not part of our life; it is only part of our experience; we throw it off and guard ourselves against it as against frost, storm, rain, hail, or any other of the external evils which may be expected to happen.

There is nothing in which people more betray their character than in what they laugh at.

Who are you then?" "I am part of that power which eternally wills evil and eternally works good.

Waste not a day in vain digression; with resolute, courageous trust seek every possible impression and make it firmly your posession you'll then work on because you must.

Strike the dog dead, it's but a critic!

Everywhere, we learn only from those whom we love.

Nothing is more dangerous than solitude.

Method will teach you to win time.

Let there be truth between us.

The whole history of the Christian Church is a mixture of errors and violence.

What a man does not understand, he does not possess.

You will find the most pronounced hatred of other nations on the lowest cultural levels. There is, though, a level where the hatred disappears completely and where one so to speak stands above the nations and where one experiences fortune or misfortune of a neighboring country as if they had happened to one's own.

The highest happiness of man ... is to have probed what is knowable and quietly to revere what is unknowable.