Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Quotes

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The man who acts never has any conscience; no one has any conscience but the man who thinks

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
The world of reason is to be regarded as a great and immortal being, who ceaselessly works out what is necessary, and so makes himself lord also over what is accidental.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Natural system — a contradiction in terms. Nature has no system; she has, she is life and its progress from an unknown center toward an unknowable goal. Scientific research is therefore endless, whether one proceed analytically into minutiae or follow the trail as a whole, in all its breadth and height.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
We shall never succeed in exhausting the immeasurable riches of nature; and no generation of men will ever have cause to boast of having comprehended the total aggregation of phenomena.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
With little art, clear wit and sense Suggest their own delivery.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Applied to practice, it [mathematics] becomes an art, like RHETORIC. In both these arts the form is everything, the substance nothing. To mathematics it is indifferent whether it reckons pence or pounds; to RHETORIC, whether it defends truth or falsehood.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
The child, offered the mother's breast, Will not in the beginning grab it; But soon it clings to it with zest. And thus at wisdom's copious breasts You'll drink each day with greater zest.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
A museum of natural history always seems to me like the tombs of Egyptian kings, in which various sorts of beasts and plants are preserved in mummified rigidity.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
It is a misfortune to pass at once from observation to conclusion, and to regard both as of equal value; but it befalls many a student.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Beauty and Genius must be kept afar if one would avoid becoming their slave.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Do people conform to the instructions of us old ones? Each thinks he must know best about himself, and thus many are lost entirely.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
What sort of faults may we retain, nay, even cherish in ourselves? Those faults which are rather pleasant than offensive to others.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Like the star that shines afar, Without haste and without rest, Let each one wheel with steady sway Round the task that rules the day, And do their best.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
As for solitude, I cannot understand how certain people seek to lay claim to intellectual stature, nobility of soul and strength of character, yet have not the slightest feeling for seclusion; for solitude, I maintain, when joined with a quiet contemplation of nature, a serene and conscious faith in creation and the Creator, and a few vexations from outside is the only school for a mind of lofty endowment.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
The church alone beyond all question Has for ill-gotten goods the right digestion.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
The present age has a bad habit of being abstruse in the sciences. We remove ourselves from common sense without opening up a higher one; we become transcendent, fantastic, fearful of intuitive perception in the real world, and when we wish to enter the practical realm, or need to, we suddenly turn atomistic and mechanical.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Certain faults are necessary to the individual if he is to exist.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
No hypothesis can lay claim to any value unless it assembles many phenomena under one concept.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
No two men see the world exactly alike, and different temperaments will apply in different ways a principle that they both acknowledge. The same man will, indeed, often see and judge the same things differently on different occasions: early convictions must give way to more mature ones. Nevertheless, may not the opinions that a man holds and expresses withstand all trials, if he only remains true to himself and others?

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Everyone believes in his youth that the world really began with him, and that all merely exists for his sake.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Man is born, not to solve the problems of the universe, but to find out where the problem applies, and then to restrain himself within the limits of the comprehensible.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
The works of Lavoisier and his associates operated upon many of us at that time like the Sun's rising after a night of moonshine: but Chemistry is now betrothed to the Mathematics, and is in consequence grown somewhat shy of her former admirers.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Not to keep from error, is the duty of the educator of men, but to guide the erring one, even to let him swill his error out of full cups — that is the wisdom of teachers. Whoever merely tastes of his error, will keep house with it for a long time, … but whoever drains it completely will have to get to know it.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
What a torment it is to see so much loveliness passing and repassing before us, and yet not dare to lay hold of it!

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Everything that frees our spirit without giving us control of ourselves is ruinous.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
One says a lot in vain, refusing;
The other mainly hears the "No."

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Whoso is content with pure experience and acts upon it has enough of truth.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
He who maintains he's right—if his the gift of tongues — Will have the last word certainly.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
The desire of knowledge is first stimulated in us when remarkable phenomena attract our attention. In order that this attention be continued it is necessary that we should feel some interest in exercising it, and thus by degrees we become better acquainted with the object of our curiosity.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
A school of art or of anything else is to be looked on as a single individual, who keeps talking to himself for a hundred years, and feels an extreme satisfaction with his own circle of favorite ideas, be they ever so silly.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe