Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Quotes

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Once more I am a wanderer, a pilgrim, through the world. But what else are you?

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
What dazzles, for the Moment spends its spirit:
What's genuine, shall Posterity inherit.

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
Behaviour is a mirror in which everyone shows his image.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Wine rejoices the heart of man and joy is the mother of all virtues.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Every man has enough power left to carry out that of which he is convinced.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
You ask which form of government is the best? Whichever teaches us to govern ourselves.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
I am amazed to see how deliberately I have entangled myself step by step. To have seen my position so clearly, and yet to have acted so like a child!

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
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.

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
How many years must a man do nothing, before he can at all know what is to be done and how to do it!

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
How can we learn self-knowledge? Never by taking thought but rather by action. Try to do your duty and you'll soon discover what you're like.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Genius is formed in quiet, character in the stream of human life.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Association with women is the basic element of good manners.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
From inaccessible mountain range by way of desert untrod by human foot to the ends of the unknown seas, the breath of the everlasting creative spirit is felt, rejoicing over every speck of dust that hearkens to it and lives.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Theories usually result from the precipitate reasoning of an impatient mind which would like to be rid of phenomena and replaces them with images, concepts, indeed often with mere words.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
I love those who yearn for the impossible.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Who wants to understand the poem
Must go to the land of poetry;
Who wishes to understand the poet
Must go to the poet's land.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
A life without love, without the presence of the beloved, is nothing but a mere magic-lantern show. We draw out slide after slide, swiftly tiring of each, and pushing it back to make haste for the next.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
This is wisdom's final thought:
Freedom alone he earns as well as life
Who day by day must conquer them anew.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
If we meet someone who owes us a debt of gratitude, we remember the fact at once. How often we can meet someone to whom we owe a debt of gratitude without thinking about it at all!

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Enthusiasm is of the greatest value, so long as we are not carried away by it.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Everyone believes in his youth that the world really began with him, and that all merely exists for his sake.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
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.

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
Not to keep from error, is the duty of the educator of men, but to guide the erring one, even to let him swill his error out of full cups — that is the wisdom of teachers. Whoever merely tastes of his error, will keep house with it for a long time, … but whoever drains it completely will have to get to know it.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
What a torment it is to see so much loveliness passing and repassing before us, and yet not dare to lay hold of it!

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Everything that frees our spirit without giving us control of ourselves is ruinous.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
One says a lot in vain, refusing;
The other mainly hears the "No."

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Whoso is content with pure experience and acts upon it has enough of truth.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe