Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Quotes

Love is an ideal thing, marriage a real thing; a confusion of the real with the ideal never goes unpunished.

All that is alive tends toward color, individuality, specificity, effectiveness and opacity. All that is done with life inclines toward knowledge, abstraction, generality transfiguration and transparency.

Time is a strange thing. It is a whimsical tyrant, which in every century has a different face for all that one says and does.

A plant is like a self-willed man, out of whom we can obtain all which we desire, if we will only treat him his own way.

We are not all equal, nor can we be so.

Water its living strength first shows, When obstacles its course oppose.

Limitation of aims is the mother of wisdom and the secret of achievement.

Divide and command, a wise maxim; Unite and guide, a better.

No doubt you are right... there would be far less suffering amongst mankind if men... did not employ their imaginations so assiduously in recalling the memory of past sorrow, instead of bearing their present lot with equanimity.

What people call the spirit of the times is mostly their own spirit in which the times mirror themselves.

We usually lose today, because there has been a yesterday, and tomorrow is coming.

One ought, everyday, to hear a song, read a fine poem, and, if possible, to speak a few reasonable words.

The older we get the more we must limit ourselves if we wish to be active.

Architecture is crystallized music.

Behavior is the mirror in which everyone shows their image.

He who does not see the whole world in his friends, does not deserve that the world should hear of him.

When I consider the narrow limits within which our active and inquiring faculties are confined; when I see how all our energies are wasted in providing for mere necessities, which again have no further end than to prolong a wretched existence; and then that all our satisfaction concerning certain subjects of investigation ends in nothing better than a passive resignation... when I consider all this... I am silent.

Thinking is more interesting than knowing, but less interesting than looking.

The confidant of my vices is my master, though he were my valet.

The poet should seize the Particular, and he should, if there be anything sound in it, thus represent the Universal.

There is repetition everywhere, and nothing is found only once in the world.

With little wit and ease to suit them, They whirl in narrow circling trails, Like kittens playing with their tails.

Nine requisites for contented living: Health enough to make work a pleasure. Wealth enough to support your needs. Strength to battle with difficulties and overcome them. Grace enough to confess your sins and forsake them. Patience enough to toil until some good is accomplished. Charity enough to see some good in your neighbor. Love enough to move you to be useful and helpful to others. Faith enough to make real the things of God. Hope enough to remove all anxious fears concerning the future.

Do the duty which lies nearest to thee.

The world of empirical morality consists for the most part of nothing but ill will and envy.

He who does not think much of himself is much more esteemed than he imagines.

Every beginning is cheerful.

I have observed that as long as one lives and bestirs himself, he can always find food and raiment, though it may not be of the choicest description.

Our wishes are presentiments of the abilities that lie in us, harbingers of what we will be able to accomplish.

He who enjoys doing and enjoys what he has done is happy.

There are but two roads that lead to an important goal and to the doing of great things: strength and perseverance. Strength is the lot of but a few privileged men; but austere perseverance, harsh and continuous, may be employed by the smallest of us and rarely fails of its purpose, for its silent power grows irresistibly greater with time.

Paternity is based anyhow only upon conviction: I am convinced, therefore, I am the father.

Time itself is an element.

A phenomenon like Mozart remains an inexplicable thing.

This is the true measure of love, When we believe that we alone can love, That no one could ever have loved so before us, And that no one will ever love in the same way after us.

People who think honestly and deeply have a hostile attitude towards the public.

The force of a language does not consist of rejecting what is foreign but of swallowing it.

Our hands we open of our own free will, and the good flies, which we can never recall.

Let us seek to fathom those things that are fathomable and reserve those things which are unfathomable for reverence in quietude.

The world only goes forward because of those who oppose it.

Let your trouble be Light will follow dark Though the heaven falls You may hear the lark.

Let no one be ashamed to say yes today if yesterday he said no. Or to say no today if yesterday he said yes. For that is life. Never to have changed-what a pitiable thing of which to boast!

If nature is your teacher, your soul will awaken.

He only earns his freedom and his life Who takes them every day by storm.

What by a straight path cannot be reached by crooked ways is never won.

What then is your duty? What the day demands.

Analysis and synthesis are both as necessary to the thinking spirit as inspiration and expiration to the organism.

The highest cannot be spoken; it can only be acted.