Johann Wolfgang von Goethe - Time Quotes

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Everything is simpler than one can imagine, at the same time more involved than can be comprehended.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
People do not understand what it costs in time and suffering to learn how to read. I have been working at it for eighty years, and I still can't say that I've succeeded.

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
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
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
Men's prejudices rest upon their character for the time being and cannot be overcome, as being part and parcel of themselves. Neither evidence nor common sense nor reason has the slightest influence upon them.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
The first look at the world, by the mind's eye, as well as by the bodily organs of vision, conveys no distinct impression, either to our heads or to our hearts. We see things without perceiving them, and it takes a long time before we learn to understand the things we see.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
The written word has this advantage, that it lasts and can await the time when it is allowed to take effect.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
If a man sets out to study all the laws, he will have no time left to transgress them.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Everything that liberates our mind without at the same time imparting self-control is pernicious.

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
The works of Lavoisier and his associates operated upon many of us at that time like the Sun's rising after a night of moonshine: but Chemistry is now betrothed to the Mathematics, and is in consequence grown somewhat shy of her former admirers.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
When young, one is confident to be able to build palaces for mankind, but when the time comes one has one's hands full just to be able to remove their trash.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
It's exactly where a thought is lacking
That, just in time, a word shows up instead.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
At all times it has not been the age, but individuals alone, who have worked for knowledge. It was the age which put Socrates to death by poison, the age which burnt Huss. The ages have always remained alike.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Time does not relinquish its rights, either over human beings or over monuments.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
If one has not read the newspapers for some months and then reads them all together, one sees, as one never saw before, how much time is wasted with this kind of literature.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
But who will dare to speak the truth out clear? The few who anything of truth have learned, And foolishly did not keep truth concealed, Their thoughts and visions to the common herd revealed, Since time began we've crucified and burned

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Someone has said that world history must from time to time be rewritten. When has there been an epoch that made this as necessary as does the present one? You provided a superb example of how it should be done. The hatred of the Romans for the victor, even when he was kindly, presumption upon outmoded privileges, the desire for a different state of affairs without having anything better in view, irrational hopes, haphazard undertakings, alliances with no prospect of benefit, and whatever else is the unhappy retinue of such times—you have described all that magnificently, proving to us that such things really happened in those days.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
I am always for a rigid adherence to a law, especially at a time like ours, when out of weakness and excessive liberality one is always conceding too much.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
With the growth of knowledge our ideas must from time to time be organized afresh. The change takes place usually in accordance with new maxims as they arise, but it always remains provisional.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Nowhere would anyone grant that science and poetry can be united. They forgot that science arose from poetry, and failed to see that a change of times might beneficently reunite the two as friends, at a higher level and to mutual advantage.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
The human race is a monotonous affair. Most people spend the greatest part of their time working in order to live, and what little freedom remains so fills them with fear that they seek out any and every means to be rid of it.

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
Since Time is not a person we can overtake when he is gone, let us honor him with mirth and cheerfulness of heart while he is passing.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Let us live in as small a circle as we will, we are either debtors or creditors before we have had time to look round.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Time is a strange thing. It is a whimsical tyrant, which in every century has a different face for all that one says and does.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
All truly wise thoughts have been thought already thousands of times; but to make them truly ours, we must think them over again honestly, till they take firm root in our personal experience.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe