Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Quotes

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It is said that no man is a hero to his valet. That is because a hero can be recognized only by a hero.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Children can scarcely be fashioned to meet with our likes and our purpose. Just as God did us give them, so must we hold them and love them, nurture and teach them to fullness and leave them to be what they are.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
The orbits of certainties touch one another; but in the interstices there is room enough for error to go forth and prevail.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Everything that we call Invention or Discovery in the higher sense of the word is the serious exercise and activity of an original feeling for truth, which, after a long course of silent cultivation, suddenly flashes out into fruitful knowledge.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Those only who know little, can be said to know anything. The greater the knowledge the greater the doubt.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
A man does not mind being blamed for his faults, and being punished for them, and he patiently suffers much for them; but he becomes impatient if he is required to give them up.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Men of genius, after all, are not immortal. What a comfort for mediocrity!

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
How one gropes and falters when one wants to dedicate himself to knowledge, how in the sciences one tends to take the back for the front and the bottom for the top, this is to be presented in the history of color theory, which by treating a specific realm, must present symbolically the destiny of many other human efforts.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Let us not dream that reason can ever be popular. Passions, emotions, may be made popular; but reason remains ever the property of an elect few.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Care is taken that trees do not grow into the sky.
In German: Es ist dafur gesorgt, dass die Baume nicht in den Himmel wachsen.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
A man who is ignorant of foreign languages is also ignorant of his own language.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Tell me with whom you associate, and I will tell you who you are.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Man finds himself in the midst of a multitude of effects, and cannot refrain from searching out their causes. As an easy-going creature, he grasps at what is nearest to him, and rests satisfied with that. This procedure is that known in philosophical books as the common-sense method.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
It is as certain as it is strange that truth and error come from one and the same source. Thus it is that we are often not at liberty to do violence to error, because at the same time we do violence to truth.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
The fine thread, which wafts and woofs through the web of knowledge, through the sciences in all periods, even through the darkest and most confusing ones, is drawn by individuals.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
A man avails himself of the truth so long as it is serviceable; but he seizes on what is false with a passionate eloquence as soon as he can make a momentary use of it.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
It is unpleasant to miss even the most trifling thing to which we have been accustomed.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Our hands we open of our own free will, and the good flies, which we can never recall.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Each of her works has an essence of its own; each of her phenomena a special characterisation: and yet their diversity is in unity.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Mathematics, like dialectics, is an instrument of the inner higher sense, while in practice it is an art like rhetoric. For both of these, nothing has value but form; content is immaterial. Whether mathematics is adding up pennies or guineas, whether rhetoric is defending truth or falsehood, makes no difference to either.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
The artist has a twofold relation to nature; he is at once her master and her slave.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Could we perfect human nature, we might also expect a perfect state of things.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
In the end we retain from our studies only that which we practically apply.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
A thorough advocate in a just cause, a penetrating mathematician facing the starry heavens, both alike bear the semblance of divinity.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Every instant she commences an immense journey, and every instant she has reached her goal.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
There are men who never err, because they never propose anything rational.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
There is much that is true which does not admit of being calculated; just as there are a great many things that cannot be brought to the test of a decisive experiment.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
A man is really alive only when he delights in the good-will of others.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
There is a politeness of the heart; this is closely allied to love.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Against great advantages in another, there are no means of defending ourselves except love.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe