Famous Quotes By Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Famous Quotes By Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

1. A really great talent finds its happiness in execution.
2. A useless life is an early death.
3. Age merely shows what children we remain.
4. All intelligent thoughts have already been thought what is necessary is only to try to think them again.
5. All the knowledge I possess everyone else can acquire, but my heart is all my own.
6. An unused life is an early death.
7. As soon as you trust yourself, you will know how to live.
8. Beauty is a manifestation of secret natural laws, which otherwise would have been hidden from us forever.
9. Beauty is everywhere a welcome guest.
10. Being brilliant is no great feat if you respect nothing.
11. Character develops itself in the stream of life.
12. Character, in great and little things, means carrying through what you feel able to do.
13. Death is a commingling of eternity with time in the death of a good man, eternity is seen looking through time.
14. Devote each day to the object then in time and every evening will find something done.
15. Doubt grows with knowledge.
16. Dream no small dreams for they have no power to move the hearts of men.
17. Error is acceptable as long as we are young but one must not drag it along into old age.
18. 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.
19. Few people have the imagination for reality.
20. First and last, what is demanded of genius is love of truth.
21. Girls we love for what they are young men for what they promise to be.
22. Go to foreign countries and you will get to know the good things one possesses at home.
23. Great thoughts and a pure heart, that is what we should ask from God.
24. Happiness is a ball after which we run wherever it rolls, and we push it with our feet when it stops.
25. He is happiest, be he king or peasant, who finds peace in his home.
26. He only earns his freedom and his life Who takes them every day by storm.
27. He who possesses art and science has religion he who does not possess them, needs religion.
28. I call architecture frozen music.
29. I do not know myself, and God forbid that I should.
30. I love those who yearn for the impossible.
31. If God had wanted me otherwise, He would have created me otherwise.
32. If I love you, what business is it of yours?
33. Ignorant men raise questions that wise men answered a thousand years ago.
34. In art the best is good enough.
35. 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.
36. It is after all the greatest art to limit and isolate oneself.
37. It is not doing the thing we like to do, but liking the thing we have to do, that makes life blessed.
38. It is the strange fate of man, that even in the greatest of evils the fear of the worst continues to haunt him.
39. It seems to never occur to fools that merit and good fortune are closely united.
40. Just trust yourself, then you will know how to live.
41. Life belongs to the living, and he who lives must be prepared for changes.
42. Love and desire are the spirit's wings to great deeds.
43. Love can do much, but duty more.
44. Love does not dominate it cultivates.
45. 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.
46. Men show their character in nothing more clearly than what they think laughable.
47. Music is either sacred or secular. The sacred agrees with its dignity, and here has its greatest effect on life, an effect that remains the same through all ages and epochs. Secular music should be cheerful throughout.
48. Nature knows no pause in progress and development, and attaches her curse on all inaction.
49. No one would talk much in society if they knew how often they misunderstood others.
50. None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free.
51. Nothing is more fearful than imagination without taste.
52. On all the peaks lies peace.
53. One always has time enough, if one will apply it well.
54. One can be instructed in society, one is inspired only in solitude.
55. One cannot develop taste from what is of average quality but only from the very best.
56. One must ask children and birds how cherries and strawberries taste.
57. Only by joy and sorrow does a person know anything about themselves and their destiny. They learn what to do and what to avoid.
58. Personality is everything in art and poetry.
59. Piety is not a goal but a means to attain through the purest peace of mind the highest culture.
60. Science arose from poetry... when times change the two can meet again on a higher level as friends.
61. Self-knowledge comes from knowing other men.
62. Superstition is the poetry of life.
63. The artist alone sees spirits. But after he has told of their appearing to him, everybody sees them.
64. The best government is that which teaches us to govern ourselves.
65. The biggest problem with every art is by the use of appearance to create a loftier reality.
66. The Christian religion, though scattered and abroad will in the end gather itself together at the foot of the cross.
67. The credit of advancing science has always been due to individuals and never to the age.
68. The mediator of the inexpressible is the work of art.
69. The person born with a talent they are meant to use will find their greatest happiness in using it.
70. The soul that sees beauty may sometimes walk alone.
71. There is a courtesy of the heart it is allied to love. From its springs the purest courtesy in the outward behavior.
72. This is the highest wisdom that I own freedom and life are earned by those alone who conquer them each day anew.
73. Those who hope for no other life are dead even for this.
74. To rule is easy, to govern difficult.
75. To the person with a firm purpose all men and things are servants.
76. To witness two lovers is a spectacle for the gods.
77. Trust yourself, then you will know how to live.
78. We always have time enough, if we will but use it aright.
79. We cannot fashion our children after our desires, we must have them and love them as God has given them to us.
80. We can't form our children on our own concepts we must take them and love them as God gives them to us.
81. We know accurately only when we know little, with knowledge doubt increases.
82. What is important in life is life, and not the result of life.
83. What is uttered from the heart alone, Will win the hearts of others to your own.
84. Where is the man who has the strength to be true, and to show himself as he is?
85. Which government is the best? The one that teaches us to govern ourselves.
86. Wisdom is found only in truth.
87. Wood burns because it has the proper stuff in it and a man becomes famous because he has the proper stuff in him.