Johann Wolfgang von Goethe - Life Quotes

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All poetry is supposed to be instructive but in an unnoticeable manner; it is supposed to make us aware of what it would be valuable to instruct ourselves in; we must deduce the lesson on our own, just as with life.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
All theory, dear friend, is grey, but the golden tree of actual life springs ever green.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Take life too seriously, and what is it worth? If the morning wake us to no new joys, if the evening bring us not the hope of new pleasure, is it worthwhile to dress and undress?

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Freedom and life are earned by those alone
Who conquer them each day anew

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
If you have a great work in your head, nothing else thrives near it; all other thoughts are repelled, and the pleasure of life itself is for the time lost.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
My days are as happy as those reserved by God for his elect; and whatever be my fate hereafter, I can never say that I have not tasted joy— the purest joy of life.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
And I like those authors best whose scenes describe my own situation in life— and the friends who are about me whose stories touch me with interest, from resembling my own homely existence.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Whoever, in middle age, attempts to realize the wishes and hopes of his early youth, invariably deceives himself. Each ten years of a man's life has its own fortunes, its own hopes, its own desires.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Seldom in the business and transactions of ordinary life, do we find the sympathy we want.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
He who thinks to realize when he is older the hopes and desires of youth is always deceiving himself, for every decade of a man's life possesses its own kind of happiness, its own hopes and prospects.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
One should not wish anyone disagreeable conditions of life; but for him who is involved in them by chance, they are touchstones of characters and of the most decisive value to man.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Of all peoples the Greeks have dreamt the dream of life best.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Life teaches us to be less harsh with ourselves and with others.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe