Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Quotes

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Superstition is the poesy of practical life; hence, a poet is none the worse for being superstitious.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
The longer I live, the more it grieves me to see man, who occupies his supreme place for the very purpose of imposing his will upon nature, and freeing himself and his from an outrageous necessity--to see him taken up with some false notion, and doing just the opposite of what he wants to do; and then, because the whole bent of his mind is spoilt, bungling miserably over everything.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Every idea appears at first as a strange visitor, and when it begins to be realized, it is hardly distinguishable from fantasy.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
What must the English and French think of the language of our philosophers when we Germans do not understand it ourselves?

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
When we find facts within our knowledge exhibited by some new method, or even, it may be, described in a foreign language, they receive a peculiar charm of novelty and wear a fresh air.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
The world of empirical morality consists for the most part of nothing but ill will and envy.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
I could have never have known so well how paltry men are, and how little they care for really high aims, if I had not tested them by my scientific researches. Thus I saw that most men only care for science so far as they get a living by it, and that they worship even error when it affords them a substance.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Wind is the loving Wooer of waters; Wind blends together Billows all-foaming. Spirit of man, Thou art like unto water! Fortune of man, Thou art like unto wind!

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

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
If a poet would work politically, he must give himself up to a party; and so soon as he does that, he is lost as a poet.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
I have heard myself accused of being an opponent, an enemy of mathematics, which no one can value more highly than I, for it accomplishes the very thing whose achievement has been denied me.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Sound and sufficient reason falls, after all, to the share of but few men, and those few men exert their influence in silence.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Individual observations, drawn from the natural objects with which we are in contact, are often the more valuable, the less the observer professionally belongs to the particular department of science which he illustrates.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Some books seem to have been written, not to teach us anything, but to let us know that the author has known something.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Still this planet's soil for noble deeds grants scope abounding.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
When you lose interest in anything, you also lose the memory for it.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
He is a man whom it is impossible to please, because he is never pleased with himself.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Words are good, but there is something better. The best is not to be explained by words. The spirit in which we act is the chief matter. Action can only be understood and represented by the spirit.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
What a master a man would be in his own subject if he taught nothing useless!

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
The sea is flowing ever, The land retains it never.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
The arts are the salt of the earth; as salt relates to food, the arts relate to technology.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
The most foolish of all errors is for clever young men to believe that they forfeit their originality in recognizing a truth which has already been recognized by others.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
A man is not little when he finds it difficult to cope with circumstances, but when circumstances overmaster him.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
The one thing she seems to aim at is Individuality; yet she cares nothing for individuals. She is always building up and destroying; but her workshop is inaccessible.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
People will allow their faults to be shown them; they will let themselves be punished for them; they will patiently endure many things because of them; they only become impatient when they have to lay them aside.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Children, like dogs, have so sharp and fine a scent that they detect and hunt out everything--the bad before all the rest. They also know well enough how this or that friend stands with their parents; and as they practice no dissimulation whatever, they serve as excellent barometers by which to observe the degree of favor or disfavor at which we stand with their parents.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
That which is most unnatural is still Nature; the stupidest philistinism has a touch of her genius. Whoso cannot see her everywhere, sees her nowhere rightly.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
She creates needs because she loves action. Wondrous! that she produces all this action so easily. Every need is a benefit, swiftly satisfied, swiftly renewed. Every fresh want is a new source of pleasure, but she soon reaches an equilibrium.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Man knows himself only insofar as he knows the world, becoming aware of it if only within himself, and of himself self only within it. Each new subject, well observed, opens up within us a new organ of thought.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Mineralogy is a science for the Understanding, for practical life; for its subjects are something dead which cannot rise again, and there is no room for synthesis.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe