Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Quotes

627 Sourced Quotes

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.
[Ger., 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
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.
[Ger., 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