Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Quotes

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The saying that no one who is unacquainted with, or a stranger to, geometry, should enter the school of the philosopher, does not mean that a man must be a mathematician in order to become a sage.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Let him who believes in immortality enjoy his happiness in silence; he has no reason to give himself airs about it.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
There are not a few problems in the natural sciences of which a man cannot speak justly without calling metaphysics to his aid; not technical words about knowing and being, such as make a show in the schools, but that wisdom of thought which was before all physics, lives with it, and will endure after it.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Us to believe in the coherency of phenomena.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
In order to depict nature in its exalted sublimity, we must not dwell exclusively on its external manifestations, but we must trace its image, reflected in the mind of man, at one time filling the dreamy land of physical myths with forms of grace and beauty, and at another developing the noble germ of artistic creations.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Seize this very minute. What you can do or dream you can do, begin it. Begin it and the work will be completed

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
The rose is wont with pride to swell, and ever seeks to rise.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
An old foundation is worthy of all respect, but it must not take from us the right to build afresh wherever we will.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
I reverence the individual who understands distinctly what he wishes; who unweariedly advances, who knows the means conducive to his object, and can seize and use them.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Poetry is the universal possession of mankind, revealing itself everywhere, and at all times, in hundreds and hundreds of men.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Her mechanism has few springs — but they never wear out, are always active and manifold.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
It is a very hard and troublesome thing to dispose of whole, half, and quarter-mistakes; to sift them and assign the portion of truth to its proper place.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
The use of a thing is only a part of its significance. To know anything thoroughly, to have the full command of it in all its appliances, we must study it on its own account, independently of any special application.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
It used to happen, and still happens, to me to take no pleasure in a work of art at the first sight of it, because it is too much for me; but if I suspect any merit in it, I try to get at it; and then I never fail to make the most gratifying discoveries--to find new qualities in the work itself and new faculties in myself.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Life seems so vulgar, so easily content with the commonplace things of every day, and yet it always nurses and cherishes certain higher claims in secret, and looks about for the means of satisfying them.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
It is a great error to take oneself for more than one is, or for less than one is worth.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
In general the sciences put some distance between themselves and life, and make their way back to it only by a roundabout path.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Our destiny often looks like a fruit-tree in winter. Who would think from its pitiable aspect that those rigid boughs, those rough twigs could next spring again be green, bloom, and even bear fruit? Yet we hope it, we know it.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
The texture of this world is made up of necessity and chance. Human reason holds the balance between them, treating necessity as the basis of existence, but manipulating and directing chance, and using it.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
When Nature begins to reveal her open secret to a man, he feels an irresistible longing for her worthiest interpreter, Art.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
He who is wise puts aside all claims which may dissipate his attention, and confining himself to one branch excels in that.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
It would be foolish for a man not to believe in his mistress's love because she could not prove it to him mathematically. She can mathematically prove her dowry, but not her love.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Talents are nurtured best in solitude, But character on life's tempestuous seas!

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
It is a calamity that the use of experiment has severed nature from man, so that he is content to understand nature merely through what artificial instruments reveal and by so doing even restricts her achievements... Microscopes and telescopes, in actual fact, confuse man's innate clarity of mind.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Whoever wishes to deny nature as an organ of the divine must begin by denying all revelation.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Lord Byron is only great as a poet; as soon as he reflects he is a child.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Rash combat oft immortalizes man; if he should fall, he is renowned in song; but after-ages reckon not the ceaseless tears which the forsaken woman sheds. Poets tell us not of the many nights consumed in weeping, or of the dreary days wherein her anguished soul vainly yearns to call her loved one back.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Germans — and they are not alone in this — have a knack of making the sciences unapproachable.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
A well-bred carriage is difficult to imitate; for in strictness it is negative, and it implies a long-continued previous training.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Mannerism is always longing to have done, and has no true enjoyment in work. A genuine, really great talent, on the other hand, has its greatest happiness in execution.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe