Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Quotes

625 Sourced Quotes

Higher yet and higher out of clouds and night, nearer yet and nearer rising to the light - light, serene and holy where my soul may rest, purified and lowly, sanctified and blest.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
It is not always needful for truth to take a definite shape; it is enough if it hovers about us like a spirit and produces harmony; if it is wafted through the air like the sound of a bell, grave and kindly.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
The assault of our enemies is not part of our life; it is only part of our experience; we throw it off and guard ourselves against it as against frost, storm, rain, hail, or any other of the external evils which may be expected to happen.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Every man bears something within him that, if it were publicly announced, would excite feelings of aversion.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
So dear night the half of life is, And the fairest half indeed.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
With little wit and ease to suit them, They whirl in narrow circling trails, Like kittens playing with their tails.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Culture which smooth the whole world licks, Also unto the devil sticks.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
To venture an opinion is like moving a piece at chess: it may be taken, but it forms the beginning of a game that is won.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Nature! We are surrounded by her and locked in her clasp: powerless to leave her, and powerless to come closer to her. Unasked and unwarned she takes us up into the whirl of her dance, and hurries on with us till we are weary and fall from her arms.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Whoever makes it a rule to test action by thought, thought by action, cannot falter, and if he does, will soon find his way back to the right road.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Her crown is love. Through love alone dare we come near her. She separates all existences, and all tend to intermingle. She has isolated all things in order that all may approach one another. She holds a couple of draughts from the cup of love to be fair payment for the pains of a lifetime.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Beware of dissipating your powers; strive constantly to concentrate them.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
I hate every violent overthrow, because as much is destroyed as is gained by it.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
We don't get to know people when they come to us; we must go to them to find out what they are like.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Thinking by analogy is not to be despised. Analogy has this merit, that it does not settle things - does not pretend to be conclusive. On the other hand, that induction is pernicious which, with a preconceived end in view, and working right forward for only that, drags in its train a number of unsifted observations, both false and true.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
There are three classes of readers; some enjoy without judgment; others judge without enjoyment; and some there are who judge while they enjoy, and enjoy while they judge. The latter class reproduces the work of art on which it is engaged. Its numbers are very small.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Man must always in some sense cling to the belief that the unknowable is knowable, otherwise speculation would cease.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
We accept every person in the world as that for which he gives himself out, only he must give himself out for something. We can put up with the unpleasant more easily than we can endure the insignificant.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
The mathematician is perfect only in so far as he is a perfect being, in so far as he perceives the beauty of truth; only then will his work be thorough, transparent, comprehensive, pure, clear, attractive, and even elegant.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
At bottom, no real object is unpoetical, if the poet knows how to use it properly.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
All theory, my friend, is grey, But green is life's glad golden tree.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Beauty is at once the ultimate principle and the highest aim of art.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
He who would study organic existence, First drives out the soul with rigid persistence; Then the parts in his hand he may hold and class, But the spiritual link is lost,

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
All rights and laws are still transmitted,
Like an eternal sickness to the race.
In German: Es erben sich Gesetz and Rechte Wie eine ew'ge Krankheit fort.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Piety is not an end, but a means: a means of attaining the highest culture by the purest tranquility of soul. Hence it may be observed that those who set up piety as an end and object are mostly hypocrites.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Who can think wise or stupid things at all that were not thought already in the past.
In German: Wer kann was Dummes, wer was Kluges denken, Das nicht die Vorwelt schon gedacht.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
The art of governing is a great metier, requiring the whole man, and it is therefore not well for a ruler to have too strong tendencies for other affairs.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
All lyrical work must, as a whole, be perfectly intelligible, but in some particulars a little unintelligible.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
I have always paid attention to the merits of my enemies, and found it an advantage.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
War is in truth a disease in which the juices that serve health and maintenance are used for the sole purpose of nourishing something foreign, something at odds with nature.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe