Johann Wolfgang von Goethe - Error Quotes

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Nature understands no jesting. She is always true, always serious, always severe. She is always right, and the errors are always those of man.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
It is difficult to know how to treat the errors of the age. If a man oppose them, he stands alone; if he surrender to them, they bring him neither joy nor credit.

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
It is as certain as it is strange that truth and error come from one and the same source. Thus it is that we are often not at liberty to do violence to error, because at the same time we do violence to truth.

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
He who only tastes his error will long dwell with it, will take delight in it as in a singular felicity; while he who drains it to the dregs will, if he be not crazy, find it to be what it is.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
To err is to be as though truth did not exist. To lay bare the error to oneself and others is retrospective discovery.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Analogy has two errors to fear - the one when it contents itself with being serviceable to wit, in which case it floats away in futile sport; the other, when it shrouds itself in tropes and similes: this last is the less dangerous of the two.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
The most foolish of all errors is for clever young men to believe that they forfeit their originality in recognizing a truth which has already been recognized by others.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
I could have never have known so well how paltry men are, and how little they care for really high aims, if I had not tested them by my scientific researches. Thus I saw that most men only care for science so far as they get a living by it, and that they worship even error when it affords them a substance.

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
Error is related to truth as sleeping is to waking. I have observed that when one has been in error, one turns to truth as though revitalized.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Should I not be proud, when for twenty years I have had to admit to myself that the great Newton and all the mathematicians and noble calculators along with him were involved in a decisive error with respect to the doctrine of color, and that I among millions was the only one who knew what was right in this great subject of nature?

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Oh happy he who still can hope in our day to breathe the truth while plunged in seas of error! What we don't know is really what we need, and what we know is of no use to us whatever!

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Error is to truth as sleep is to waking. I have observed that one turns, as if refreshed, from error back to truth.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Truth is contrary to our nature, not so error, and this for a very simple reason; truth demands that we should recognize ourselves as limited, error flatters us that, in one way or another, we are unlimited.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
I could never have known so well how paltry men are, and how little they care for really high aims, if I had not tested them by my scientific researches. Thus I saw that most men only care for science so far as they get a living by it, and that they worship even error when it affords them a subsistence.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
There is no trifling with nature; it is always true, grave, and severe; it is always in the light, and the faults and errors fall to our share. It defies incompetency, but reveals its secrets to the competent, the truthful, and the pure.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Without my attempts in natural science, I should never have learned to know mankind such as it is. In nothing else can we so closely approach pure contemplation and thought, so closely observe the errors of the senses and of the understanding, the weak and strong points of character.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Nothing is more damaging to a new truth than an old error.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
It is quite beyond me how anyone can believe God speaks to us in books and stories. If the world does not directly reveal to us our relationship to it, if our hearts fail to tell us what we owe ourselves and others, we shall assuredly not learn it from books, which are at best designed but to give names to our errors.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Error is acceptable as long as we are young; but one must not drag it along into old age.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe