Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Quotes

625 Sourced Quotes

Death is Nature's expert advice to get plenty of life.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Wealth and speed are what the world admires, what each pursues. Railways, express mails, steamships and every possible facility for communications are the achievement in which the civilized world view and revels, only to languish in mediocrity by that very fact. Indeed, the effect of this diffusion is to spread the culture of the mediocre.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
The most fortunate of men, Be he a king or commoner, is he Whose welfare is assured in his own home.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
What reason would grope for in vain, spontaneous impulse ofttimes achieves at a stroke, with light and pleasureful guidance.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
A plant is like a self-willed man, out of whom we can obtain all which we desire, if we will only treat him his own way.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
If you miss the first buttonhole, you will not succeed in buttoning up your coat.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Ethics are not the result of reflection; they are beautiful nature, created and innate. In a greater or lesser degree they are Nature's gift to all; in a high degree they belong to a few highly-gifted minds.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
If the word is not dead when it reaches the hearer, he murders it at once by a contradiction, a stipulation, a condition, a digression, an interruption, and all the thousand tricks of conversation.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Every creature sundered from its natural surroundings, and brought into strange company, makes an unpleasant impression on us, which disappears only by habit

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Science helps us before all things in this, that it somewhat lightens the feeling of wonder with which Nature fills us; then, however, as life becomes more and more complex, it creates new facilities for the avoidance of what would do us harm and the promotion of what will do us good.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
The supreme achievement would be to see that stating a fact is starting a theory.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
If you lay duties upon people and give them no rights, you must pay them well.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
What makes poetry? A full heart, brimful of one noble passion.
Variant translation: I feel what makes the poet, a full heart, filled entirely with one emotion

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
When I err every one can see it, but not when I lie.
In German: Wenn ich irre kann es jeder bemerken; wenn ich luge, nicht.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Content without method leads to fantasy; method without content to empty sophistry; matter without form to unwieldy crudition, form without matter to hollow speculation.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Man usually believes, if only words he hears,
That also with them goes material for thinking.
In German: Gewohnlich glaubt der Mensch, wenn er nur Worte hort, Es musse sich dabei doch auch was denken.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
The world cannot do without great men, but great men are very troublesome to the world.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
How useful it is to write; For what one has, in black and white, One carries home and then goes through it.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Seeking and blundering are good, for it is only by seeking and blundering we learn.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
I wish the crowd to feel itself well treated, Especially since it lives and lets me live.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Hatred is active displeasure, envy passive. We need not wonder that envy turns to soon to hatred.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Unlimited activity, of whatever kind, must end in bankruptcy.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
She tosses her creatures out of nothingness, and tells them not whence they came, nor whither they go. It is their business to run, she knows the road.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
No, no! The devil is an egotist,
And is not apt, without why or wherefore,
"For God's sake," others to assist.
In German: Nein, nein! Der Teufel ist ein Egoist Und thut nicht leicht um Gottes Willen, Was einem Andern nutzlich ist.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
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
Scientific man is supposed to limit himself to his immediate surroundings. However if he should occasionally want to step forth as a poet, he certainly should not be prevented from doing so.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
The universe is a harmonious whole, each creature is but a note, a shade of a great harmony, which man must study in its entirety and greatness, lest each detail should remain a dead letter.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe