Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Quotes

625 Sourced Quotes

Let mental culture go on advancing, let the natural sciences progress in even greater extent and depth, and the human mind widen itself as much as it desires: beyond the elevation and moral culture of Christianity, as it shines forth in the Gospels, it will not go.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
If the world does improve on the whole, yet youth must always begin anew, and go through the stages of culture from the beginning.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
We lay aside letters never to read them again, and at last we destroy them out of discretion, and so disappears the most beautiful, the most immediate breath of life, irrevocably for ourselves and for others.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
No one is willing to believe that adults too, like children, wander about this earth in a daze and, like children, do not know where they come from or where they are going, act as rarely as they do according to genuine motives, and are as thoroughly governed as they are by biscuits and cake and the rod.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
When I consider the narrow limits within which our active and inquiring faculties are confined; when I see how all our energies are wasted in providing for mere necessities, which again have no further end than to prolong a wretched existence; and then that all our satisfaction concerning certain subjects of investigation ends in nothing better than a passive resignation... when I consider all this... I am silent.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Instruction does much, but encouragement everything.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Beware of her fair hair, for she excels All women in the magic of her locks; And when she winds them round a young man's neck, She will not ever set him free again.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Whatever Nature undertakes, she can only accomplish it in a sequence. She never makes a leap.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Nature understands no jesting. She is always true, always serious, always severe. She is always right, and the errors are always those of man.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Freedom consists not in refusing to recognize anything above us, but in respecting something which is above us; for by respecting it, we raise ourselves to it, and, by our very acknowledgment, prove that we bear within ourselves what is higher, and are worthy to be on a level with it.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
It is well for us that man can only endure a certain degree of unhappiness; what is beyond that either annihilates him or passes by him and leaves him apathetic.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Let no one think that he can conquer the first impressions of his youth.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Nothing should be treasured more highly than the value of the day.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
They teach in academies far too many things, and far too much that is useless.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
What one wishes for in youth, one has in abundance in old age.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Mediocrity has no greater consolation than in the thought that genius is not immortal.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
An angel! Nonsense! Everybody so describes his mistress; and yet I find it impossible to tell you how perfect she is, or why she is so perfect: suffice it to say she has captivated all my senses.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
The birds in the forest are silent
Just wait, soon
You will rest as well.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
What you have inherited from your fathers
Work on, that you may possess it.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
First and last, what is demanded of genius is love of truth.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Mathematicians are like a certain type of Frenchman: when you talk to them they translate it into their own language, and then it soon turns into something completely different.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Truth is a torch but a tremendous one. That is why we hurry past it, shielding our eyes, indeed, in fear of getting burned.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Who rides, so late, through night and wind?
It is the father with his child.
He holds the boy in the crook of his arm
He holds him safe, he keeps him warm.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
There is no permanence in doubt; it incites the mind to closer inquiry and experiment, from which, if rightly managed, certainty proceeds, and in this alone can man find thorough satisfaction.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Don't say that you want to give, but go ahead and give! You'll never catch up with a mere hope.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Who longs in solitude to live, Ah! soon his wish will gain: Men hope and love, men get and give, and leave him to his pain.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Where is the man who has the strength to be true, and to show himself as he is?

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
For the rest of it, the last and greatest art is to limit and isolate oneself.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
I treat my heart like a sick child and gratify its every fancy

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
The fate of the architect is the strangest of all. How often he expends his whole soul, his whole heart and passion, to produce buildings into which he himself may never enter.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe