Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Quotes

627 Sourced Quotes

What makes poetry? A full heart, brimful of one noble passion.
Variant translation: I feel what makes the poet, a full heart, filled entirely with one emotion

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
The affairs of the world are no more than so much trickery, and a man who toils for money or honour or whatever else in deference to the wishes of others, rather than because his own desire or needs lead him to do so, will always be a fool.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Behaviour is a mirror in which everyone shows his image.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
With little art, clear wit and sense Suggest their own delivery.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
It is a calamity that the use of experiment has severed nature from man, so that he is content to understand nature merely through what artificial instruments reveal and by so doing even restricts her achievements... Microscopes and telescopes, in actual fact, confuse man's innate clarity of mind.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Divide and rule, the politician cries; unite and lead, is watchword of the wise.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Sciences destroy themselves in two ways: by the breadth they reach and by the depth they plumb.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Mathematics, like dialectics, is an instrument of the inner higher sense, while in practice it is an art like rhetoric. For both of these, nothing has value but form; content is immaterial. Whether mathematics is adding up pennies or guineas, whether rhetoric is defending truth or falsehood, makes no difference to either.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
I have found a paper of mine among some others in which I call architecture 'petrified music.' Really there is something in this; the tone of mind produced by architecture approaches the effect of music.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
No phenomenon can be explained in and of itself; only many comprehended together, methodically arranged, in the end yield something that could be regarded as theory. In Karl J. Fink

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
You often say to yourself in the course of your life that you ought to avoid having too much business, 'polypragmosyne' [incessant activity], and, more especially, that the older you get, the more you ought to avoid entering on new business. But it's all very well saying this, and giving yourself andothers good advice. The very fact of growing older means taking up a new business; all our circumstances change, and we must either stop doing anything at all or else willing and consciously take on the new role we have to play on life's stage.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Opponents fancy they refute us when they repeat their own opinion and pay no attention to ours.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
There is nothing by which men display their character so much as in what they consider ridiculous... Fools and sensible men are equally innocuous. It is in the half fools and the half wise that the great danger lies.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
The greatest happiness for the thinking man is to have fathomed the fathomable, and to quietly revere the unfathomable.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
It is unpleasant to miss even the most trifling thing to which we have been accustomed.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Everything that liberates our mind without at the same time imparting self-control is pernicious.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
What reason would grope for in vain, spontaneous impulse ofttimes achieves at a stroke, with light and pleasureful guidance.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
I hate every violent overthrow, because as much is destroyed as is gained by it.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Man is not born to solve the problem of the universe, but to find out what he has to do; and to restrain himself within the limits of his comprehension.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
To understand the phenomena of colour nothing is required but unbiased observation and a sound head, but these are scarcer than folks imagine.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
The works of Lavoisier and his associates operated upon many of us at that time like the Sun's rising after a night of moonshine: but Chemistry is now betrothed to the Mathematics, and is in consequence grown somewhat shy of her former admirers.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Every bird has its decoy, and every man is led and misled in his own peculiar way.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
The field of experience is the whole universe in all directions. Theory remains shut up within the limits of human faculties.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
It is the great triumph of genius to make the common appear novel.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Mannerism is always longing to have done, and has no true enjoyment in work. A genuine, really great talent, on the other hand, has its greatest happiness in execution.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe