Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Quotes

625 Sourced Quotes

If thou wouldst hear what seemly is and fit, inquire of noble woman; they can tell, who in life's common usage hold their place by graceful deed and aptly chosen word.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
To act is easy, to think is hard; to act according to our thought is troublesome.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
He who only tastes his error will long dwell with it, will take delight in it as in a singular felicity; while he who drains it to the dregs will, if he be not crazy, find it to be what it is.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
A crisis must necessarily arise when a field of knowledge matures enough to become a science, for those who focus on details and treat them as separate will be set against those who have their eye on the universal and try to fit the particular into it.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Nature, in her process of specification, seems to get, so to speak, into a cul de sac, where she cannot advance, and whence she will not recede.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Wood burns because it has the proper stuff for that purpose in it; and a man becomes renowned because he has the necessary stuff in him. Renown is not to be sought, and all pursuit of it is vain. A person may, indeed, by skillful conduct and various artificial means, make a sort of name for himself; but if the inner jewel is wanting, all is vanity, and will not last a day.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
To communicate knowledge by means of analogy appears to me a process equally useful and pleasant. The analogous case is not there to force itself on the attention or prove anything; it offers a comparison with some other cases, but it is not in union with it.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Hypotheses are lullabies for teachers to sing their students to sleep.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Nothing is more odious than the majority, for it consists of a few powerful leaders, a certain number of accommodating scoundrels and submissive weaklings, and a mass of men who trot after them without thinking, or knowing their own minds.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
A man's name is not like a mantle which merely hangs about him...but a perfectly fitting garment, which, like the skin, has grown over him, at which one cannot rake and scrape without injuring the man himself.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Reason is applied to what is developing, practical understanding to what is developed. The former does not ask, What is the Purpose? and the latter does not ask, What is the source? Reason takes pleasure in development; practical understanding tries to hold things fast so that it can use them.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Generally speaking, an author's style is a faithful copy of his mind. If you would write a lucid style, let there first be light in your own mind; and if you would write a grand style, you ought to have a grand character.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
A state of true and universal tolerance is best ensured by leaving alone the peculiarities of men and peoples.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Necessity is cruel, but it is the only test of inward strength. Every fool may live according to his own likings.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Men's prejudices rest upon their character for the time being and cannot be overcome, as being part and parcel of themselves. Neither evidence nor common sense nor reason has the slightest influence upon them.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Every decided colour does a certain violence to the eye, and forces the organ to opposition.

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
I receive mathematics as the most sublime and useful science, so long as they are applied in their proper place; but I cannot commend the misuse of them in matters which do not belong to their sphere, and in which, noble science as they are, they seem to be mere nonsense.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Fools and wise men are equally harmless. It is the half-fools and half-wise that are dangerous.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Yet through delivery orators succeed, I feel that I am far behind indeed.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Each traveler should know what he has to see, and what properly belongs to him, on a journey.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
The words you've bandied are sufficient;
'Tis deeds that I prefer to see.
In German: Der Worte sind genug gewechselt, Lasst mich auch endlich Thaten sehn.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
The contemplation of the architecture of the universe in the infinitely great and infinitely little of which it is composed, leads us inevitably to the conclusion that at the bottom of the whole an idea lies, according to which God in nature, and nature in God from eternity to eternity, works and shapes forth all things.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
It matters little whether a man be mathematically or philologically or artistically cultivated, so he be but cultivated.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Smoothly and lightly the golden seed by the furrow is covered.

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
In science the treatment is nothing, and all the effect lies in the discovery.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Everything which is properly business we must keep carefully separate from life. Business requires earnestness and method; life must have a freed handling.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Water its living strength first shows, When obstacles its course oppose.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
A mind, once formed, is never suited after,
One yet in growth will ever grateful be.
In German: Wer fertig ist, dem ist nichts recht zu machen, Ein Werdender wird immer dankbar sein.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe