Johann Wolfgang von Goethe - Nature Quotes

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Nature goes her own way, and all that to us seems an exception is really according to order.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
The contemplation of the architecture of the universe in the infinitely great and infinitely little of which it is composed, leads us inevitably to the conclusion that at the bottom of the whole an idea lies, according to which God in nature, and nature in God from eternity to eternity, works and shapes forth all things.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Nature, in her process of specification, seems to get, so to speak, into a cul de sac, where she cannot advance, and whence she will not recede.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
She has always thought and always thinks; though not as a man, but as Nature. She broods over an all-comprehending idea, which no searching can find out.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
A man may twist as he pleases, and do what he pleases, but he inevitably comes back to the track to which nature has destined him.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Mere communion with nature, mere contact with the free air, exercise a soothing yet strengthening influence on the wearied spirit, calm the storm of passion, and soften the heart when shaken by sorrow to its inmost depths.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
That which is most unnatural is still Nature; the stupidest philistinism has a touch of her genius. Whoso cannot see her everywhere, sees her nowhere rightly.

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
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
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
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
In order to depict nature in its exalted sublimity, we must not dwell exclusively on its external manifestations, but we must trace its image, reflected in the mind of man, at one time filling the dreamy land of physical myths with forms of grace and beauty, and at another developing the noble germ of artistic creations.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Beauty is a primeval phenomenon, which itself never makes its appearance, but the reflection of which is visible in a thousand different utterances of the creative mind, and is as various as nature herself.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Ethics are not the result of reflection; they are beautiful nature, created and innate. In a greater or lesser degree they are Nature's gift to all; in a high degree they belong to a few highly-gifted minds.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
The artist has a twofold relation to nature; he is at once her master and her slave.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Nothing is more consonant with Nature than that she puts into operation in the smallest detail that which she intends as a whole.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
In nature we never see anything isolated, but everything in connection with something else which is before it, beside it, under it and over it.

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
Stood I, O Nature! man alone in thee, Then were it worth one's while a man to be.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Must it ever be thus-that the source of our happiness must also be the fountain of our misery? The full and ardent sentiment which animated my heart with the love of nature, overwhelming me with a torrent of delight, and which brought all paradise before me, has now become an insupportable torment, a demon which perpetually pursues and harrasses me.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Nature! We are enveloped and embraced by her, incapable of emerging from her and incapable of entering her more deeply. Unbidden and unwarned, she receives us into the circuits of her dance, drifting onward with us herself, until we grow tired and drop from her arms.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
If I work incessantly to the last, nature owes me another form of existence when the present one collapses.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Men in a state of nature, uncivilized nations, children, have a great fondness for colors in their utmost brightness, and especially for yellow-red.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
By nature we have no defect that could not become a strength, no strength that could not become a defect.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Assuredly there is no more lovely worship of God than that for which no image is required, but which springs up in our breast spontaneously when nature speaks to the soul, and the soul speaks to nature face to face.

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
Scientific knowledge helps us mainly because it makes the wonder to which we are called by nature rather more intelligible.

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
Science helps us before all things in this, that it somewhat lightens the feeling of wonder with which Nature fills us; then, however, as life becomes more and more complex, it creates new facilities for the avoidance of what would do us harm and the promotion of what will do us good.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe