Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Quotes

625 Sourced Quotes

Mathematics must subdue the flights of our reason; they are the staff of the blind; no one can take a step without them; and to them and experience is due all that is certain in physics.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
For what one has in black and white, One can carry home in comfort.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
The confidant of my vices is my master, though he were my valet.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Doubt ever grows alongside of knowledge.
In German: Mit dem Wissen wächst der Zweifel.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Our hands we open of our own free will, and the good flies, which we can never recall.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
The rose is wont with pride to swell, and ever seeks to rise.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Seize this very minute. What you can do or dream you can do, begin it. Begin it and the work will be completed

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
In order to depict nature in its exalted sublimity, we must not dwell exclusively on its external manifestations, but we must trace its image, reflected in the mind of man, at one time filling the dreamy land of physical myths with forms of grace and beauty, and at another developing the noble germ of artistic creations.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Us to believe in the coherency of phenomena.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
There are not a few problems in the natural sciences of which a man cannot speak justly without calling metaphysics to his aid; not technical words about knowing and being, such as make a show in the schools, but that wisdom of thought which was before all physics, lives with it, and will endure after it.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Let him who believes in immortality enjoy his happiness in silence; he has no reason to give himself airs about it.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
The saying that no one who is unacquainted with, or a stranger to, geometry, should enter the school of the philosopher, does not mean that a man must be a mathematician in order to become a sage.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Against great advantages in another, there are no means of defending ourselves except love.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
There is a politeness of the heart; this is closely allied to love.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
A man is really alive only when he delights in the good-will of others.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
There is much that is true which does not admit of being calculated; just as there are a great many things that cannot be brought to the test of a decisive experiment.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
There are men who never err, because they never propose anything rational.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Every instant she commences an immense journey, and every instant she has reached her goal.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
A thorough advocate in a just cause, a penetrating mathematician facing the starry heavens, both alike bear the semblance of divinity.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
In the end we retain from our studies only that which we practically apply.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Could we perfect human nature, we might also expect a perfect state of things.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
The artist has a twofold relation to nature; he is at once her master and her slave.

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
Each of her works has an essence of its own; each of her phenomena a special characterisation: and yet their diversity is in unity.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Everything that we call Invention or Discovery in the higher sense of the word is the serious exercise and activity of an original feeling for truth, which, after a long course of silent cultivation, suddenly flashes out into fruitful knowledge.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
How one gropes and falters when one wants to dedicate himself to knowledge, how in the sciences one tends to take the back for the front and the bottom for the top, this is to be presented in the history of color theory, which by treating a specific realm, must present symbolically the destiny of many other human efforts.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Men of genius, after all, are not immortal. What a comfort for mediocrity!

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
A man does not mind being blamed for his faults, and being punished for them, and he patiently suffers much for them; but he becomes impatient if he is required to give them up.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Those only who know little, can be said to know anything. The greater the knowledge the greater the doubt.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Children can scarcely be fashioned to meet with our likes and our purpose. Just as God did us give them, so must we hold them and love them, nurture and teach them to fullness and leave them to be what they are.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe