A just thinker will allow full swing to his scepticism. I dip my pen in the blackest ink, because I am not afraid of falling into my inkpot.... We are of different opinions at different hours, but we always may be said to be at heart on the side of truth.

Good manners are made up of petty sacrifices.

The highest virtue is always against the law.

Our country, customs, laws, our ambitions, and our notions of fit and fair-all these we never made; we found them ready-made; we but quote from them. What would remain to me if this art of appropriation were derogatory to genius? Every one of my writings has been furnished to me by a thousand different persons, a thousand things; wise and foolish have brought me, without suspecting it, the offering of their thoughts, faculties, and experience. My work is an aggregation of beings taken from the whole of nature. It bears the name of Goethe.

For everything you have missed, you have gained something else, and for everything you gain, you lose something else.

Many might go to Heaven with half the labor they go to hell.

Open the doors of opportunity to talent and virtue and they will do themselves justice, and property will not be in bad hands.