174 Quotes by Johann Goethe

• On all the peaks lies peace.
• Science arose from poetry... when times change the two can meet again on a higher level as friends.
• Precaution is better than cure.
• Piety is not a goal but a means to attain through the purest peace of mind the highest culture.
• Personality is everything in art and poetry.
• Passions are vices or virtues to their highest powers.
• One must ask children and birds how cherries and strawberries taste.
• One cannot develop taste from what is of average quality but only from the very best.
• It is the strange fate of man, that even in the greatest of evils the fear of the worst continues to haunt him.
• One always has time enough, if one will apply it well.
• Objects in pictures should so be arranged as by their very position to tell their own story.
• Nothing shows a man's character more than what he laughs at.
• Nothing is worth more than this day.
• Nothing is to be rated higher than the value of the day.
• Nothing is more terrible than to see ignorance in action.
• Nothing is more fearful than imagination without taste.
• None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free.
• No one would talk much in society if they knew how often they misunderstood others.
• No one has ever learned fully to know themselves.
• Nature knows no pause in progress and development, and attaches her curse on all inaction.
• One can be instructed in society, one is inspired only in solitude.
• Where is the man who has the strength to be true, and to show himself as he is?
• We don't get to know people when they come to us; we must go to them to find out what they are like.
• We know accurately only when we know little, with knowledge doubt increases.
• We usually lose today, because there has been a yesterday, and tomorrow is coming.
• We will burn that bridge when we come to it.
• What by a straight path cannot be reached by crooked ways is never won.
• What is not started today is never finished tomorrow.
• What is uttered from the heart alone, Will win the hearts of others to your own.
• Self-knowledge comes from knowing other men.
• When ideas fail, words come in very handy.
• Sowing is not as difficult as reaping.
• Which government is the best? The one that teaches us to govern ourselves.
• Who is the most sensible person? The one who finds what is to their own advantage in all that happens to them.
• Who is the wisest man? He who neither knows or wishes for anything else than what happens.
• Whoever wishes to keep a secret must hide the fact that he possesses one.
• Wisdom is found only in truth.
• Wood burns because it has the proper stuff in it; and a man becomes famous because he has the proper stuff in him.
• The artist alone sees spirits. But after he has told of their appearing to him, everybody sees them.
• Talk well of the absent whenever you have the opportunity.
• Men show their character in nothing more clearly than what they think laughable.
• All the knowledge I possess everyone else can acquire, but my heart is all my own.
• Mysteries are not necessarily miracles.
• Certain defects are necessary for the existence of individuality.
• Being brilliant is no great feat if you respect nothing.
• Beauty is everywhere a welcome guest.
• Beauty is a manifestation of secret natural laws, which otherwise would have been hidden from us forever.
• Be generous with kindly words, especially about those who are absent.
• Be above it! Make the world serve your purpose, but do not serve it.
• As soon as you trust yourself, you will know how to live.
• Character, in great and little things, means carrying through what you feel able to do.
• Common sense is the genius of humanity.
• All intelligent thoughts have already been thought; what is necessary is only to try to think them again.
• Age merely shows what children we remain.
• A person places themselves on a level with the ones they praise.
• A person hears only what they understand.
• A noble person attracts noble people, and knows how to hold on to them.
• A man's manners are a mirror in which he shows his portrait.
• A creation of importance can only be produced when its author isolates himself, it is a child of solitude.
• A correct answer is like an affectionate kiss.
• All things are only transitory.
• Let everyone sweep in front of his own door, and the whole world will be clean.
• Divide and rule, the politician cries; unite and lead, is watchword of the wise.
• Mastery passes often for egotism.
• Many people take no care of their money till they come nearly to the end of it, and others do just the same with their time.
• Man is made by his belief. As he believes, so he is.
• Magic is believing in yourself, if you can do that, you can make anything happen.
• Love does not dominate; it cultivates.
• Love can do much, but duty more.
• Love and desire are the spirit's wings to great deeds.
• Live dangerously and you live right.
• Character is formed in the stormy billows of the world.
• Letters are among the most significant memorial a person can leave behind them.
• Knowing is not enough; we must apply. Willing is not enough; we must do.
• A clever man commits no minor blunders.
• Know thyself? If I knew myself I would run away.
• Just trust yourself, then you will know how to live.
• Devote each day to the object then in time and every evening will find something done.
• Destiny grants us our wishes, but in its own way, in order to give us something beyond our wishes.
• Deeply earnest and thoughtful people stand on shaky footing with the public.
• Death is a commingling of eternity with time; in the death of a good man, eternity is seen looking through time.
• Daring ideas are like chessmen moved forward; they may be beaten, but they may start a winning game.
• Correction does much, but encouragement does more.
• The world remains ever the same.
• In nature we never see anything isolated, but everything in connection with something else which is before it, beside it, under it and over it.
• The intelligent man finds almost everything ridiculous, the sensible man hardly anything.
• The little man is still a man.
• The man who occupies the first place seldom plays the principal part.
• The man with insight enough to admit his limitations comes nearest to perfection.
• The mediator of the inexpressible is the work of art.
• The people who are absent are the ideal; those who are present seem to be quite commonplace.
• The right man is the one who seizes the moment.
• The hardest thing to see is what is in front of your eyes.
• The unnatural, that too is natural.
• The formation of one's character ought to be everyone's chief aim.
• There is a courtesy of the heart; it is allied to love. From its springs the purest courtesy in the outward behavior.
• There is nothing in the world more shameful than establishing one's self on lies and fables.
• There is nothing in which people more betray their character than in what they laugh at.
• There is nothing insignificant in the world. It all depends on the point of view.
• There is nothing so terrible as activity without insight.
• Thinking is easy, acting is difficult, and to put one's thoughts into action is the most difficult thing in the world.
• Thinking is more interesting than knowing, but less interesting than looking.
• We cannot fashion our children after our desires, we must have them and love them as God has given them to us.
• The soul that sees beauty may sometimes walk alone.
• To rule is easy, to govern difficult.
• It is after all the greatest art to limit and isolate oneself.
• It is better to be deceived by one's friends than to deceive them.
• It is in self-limitation that a master first shows himself.
• We are never further from what we wish than when we believe that we have what we wished for.
• We are never deceived; we deceive ourselves.
• We always have time enough, if we will but use it aright.
• Upon the creatures we have made, we are, ourselves, at last, dependent.
• Unlike grown ups, children have little need to deceive themselves.
• Trust yourself, then you will know how to live.
• The human mind will not be confined to any limits.
• To the person with a firm purpose all men and things are servants.
• In art the best is good enough.
• To hard necessity ones will and fancy must conform.
• To create something you must be something.
• To appreciate the noble is a gain which can never be torn from us.
• The best government is that which teaches us to govern ourselves.
• The biggest problem with every art is by the use of appearance to create a loftier reality.
• The Christian religion, though scattered and abroad will in the end gather itself together at the foot of the cross.
• The coward only threatens when he is safe.
• The credit of advancing science has always been due to individuals and never to the age.
• The decline of literature indicates the decline of a nation.
• The deed is everything, the glory is naught.
• To witness two lovers is a spectacle for the gods.
• Everybody wants to be somebody; nobody wants to grow.
• In the realm of ideas everything depends on enthusiasm... in the real world all rests on perseverance.
• Great thoughts and a pure heart, that is what we should ask from God.
• Go to foreign countries and you will get to know the good things one possesses at home.
• Girls we love for what they are; young men for what they promise to be.
• Fresh activity is the only means of overcoming adversity.
• For just when ideas fail, a word comes in to save the situation.
• For a man to achieve all that is demanded of him he must regard himself as greater than he is.
• First and last, what is demanded of genius is love of truth.
• He is dead in this world who has no belief in another.
• Everything in the world may be endured except continual prosperity.
• He is happiest, be he king or peasant, who finds peace in his home.
• Every spoken word arouses our self-will.
• Every person above the ordinary has a certain mission that they are called to fulfill.
• Every day we should hear at least one little song, read one good poem, see one exquisite picture, and, if possible, speak a few sensible words.
• Every author in some way portrays himself in his works, even if it be against his will.
• Error is acceptable as long as we are young; but one must not drag it along into old age.
• Dream no small dreams for they have no power to move the hearts of men.
• Doubt grows with knowledge.
• Do not give in too much to feelings. A overly sensitive heart is an unhappy possession on this shaky earth.
• Behavior is the mirror in which everyone shows their image.
• Few people have the imagination for reality.
• I think that I am better than the people who are trying to reform me.
• Ignorant men raise questions that wise men answered a thousand years ago.
• If your treat an individual... as if he were what he ought to be and could be, he will become what he ought to be and could be.
• If you wish to know the mind of a man, listen to his words.
• If you start to think of your physical and moral condition, you usually find that you are sick.
• If you must tell me your opinions, tell me what you believe in. I have plenty of doubts of my own.
• If you modestly enjoy your fame you are not unworthy to rank with the holy.
• If I love you, what business is it of yours?
• If God had wanted me otherwise, He would have created me otherwise.
• If children grew up according to early indications, we should have nothing but geniuses.
• If a man writes a book, let him set down only what he knows. I have guesses enough of my own.
• Hatred is something peculiar. You will always find it strongest and most violent where there is the lowest degree of culture.
• I will listen to anyone's convictions, but pray keep your doubts to yourself.
• We can't form our children on our own concepts; we must take them and love them as God gives them to us.
• I never knew a more presumptuous person than myself. The fact that I say that shows that what I say is true.
• I love those who yearn for the impossible.
• I do not know myself, and God forbid that I should.
• I call architecture frozen music.
• He who possesses art and science has religion; he who does not possess them, needs religion.
• He who has a task to perform must know how to take sides, or he is quite unworthy of it.
• He who enjoys doing and enjoys what he has done is happy.
• He who does not think much of himself is much more esteemed than he imagines.
• If a man or woman is born ten years sooner or later, their whole aspect and performance shall be different.
• It seems to never occur to fools that merit and good fortune are closely united.

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