Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Quotes

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

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
Lord Byron is only great as a poet; as soon as he reflects he is a child.

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

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

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

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
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
The world cannot do without great men, but great men are very troublesome to the world.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Content without method leads to fantasy; method without content to empty sophistry; matter without form to unwieldy crudition, form without matter to hollow speculation.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Man usually believes, if only words he hears,
That also with them goes material for thinking.
In German: Gewohnlich glaubt der Mensch, wenn er nur Worte hort, Es musse sich dabei doch auch was denken.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
When I err every one can see it, but not when I lie.
In German: Wenn ich irre kann es jeder bemerken; wenn ich luge, nicht.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
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