Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Quotes
What wise or stupid thing can man conceive
That was not thought of in ages long ago?
When young, one is confident to be able to build palaces for mankind, but when the time comes one has one's hands full just to be able to remove their trash.
None but the lonely heart
Knows what I suffer!
If any one asks me for good advice, I say I will give it, but only on condition that you promise me not to take it.
There is nothing worth thinking but it has been thought before; we must only try to think it again.
Truth is a torch, but a huge one, and so it is only with blinking eyes what we all of us try to get past it, in actual terror of being burnt.
Someone criticized an elderly man for wooing young women. He replied that that was the only way to rejuvenation, which was, after all, everybody's wish.
There are people who make no mistakes because they never wish to do anything worth doing.
In politics people throw themselves, as on a sickbed, from one side to the other in the belief they will lie more comfortably.
How can you come to know yourself? Never by thinking, always by doing. Try to do your duty, and you'll know right away what you amount to.
We don't get to know people when they come to us; we have to go to them so as to learn what they are like.
The history of knowledge is a great fugue in which the voices of the nations one after the other emerge.
Certain faults are necessary for the existence of the individual. We would resent it if old friends were to get rid of certain peculiarities.
It is difficult to know how to treat the errors of the age. If a man oppose them, he stands alone; if he surrender to them, they bring him neither joy nor credit.
That we understand something perfectly, that we accomplish something better than anyone else around us, that is what matters.
So as to comprehend that the sky is blue everywhere one doesn't need to travel around the world.
Who is the happiest of men? He who values the merits of others,
And in their pleasure takes joy, even as though it were his own.
One ought, every day at least, to hear a little song, read a good poem, see a fine picture, and, if it were possible, to speak a few reasonable words.
Very few people love others for what they are; rather, they love what they lend them, their own selves, their own idea of them.
Man is born, not to solve the problems of the universe, but to find out where the problem applies, and then to restrain himself within the limits of the comprehensible.
Our passions are, in truth, like the phoenix. When the old one burns away, the new one rises out of its ashes at once.
Ingratitude is always a kind of weakness. I have never known men of ability to be ungrateful.
Of freedom and of life he only is deserving
Who every day must conquer them anew.
How can one learn to know oneself? Never by introspection, rather by action. Try to do your duty, and you will know right away what you are like.
Whatever you can do, or dream you can do, begin it. Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it!
There is no surer way of evading the world than by Art; and no surer way of uniting with it than by Art.
I come more and more to the conclusion that one must take the side of the minority which is always the more intelligent one.
Error is related to truth as sleep to waking. I have observed that on awakening from error a man turns again to truth as with new vigour.
All extraordinary men, who have accomplished great and astonishing actions, have ever been decried by the world as drunken or insane.
We are fond of looking to the future, because our secret wishes make us apt to turn in our favour the uncertainties which move about in it hither and thither.
