Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Knowing is not enough, we must apply. Willing is not enough, we must do.

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

A really great talent finds its happiness in execution.

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

One ought, every day at least, to hear a little song, read a good poem, see a fine picture, and, if it were possible, to speak a few reasonable words.

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Great thoughts and a pure heart, that is what we should ask from God.

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

This is the highest wisdom that I own; freedom and life are earned by those alone who conquer them each day anew.

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

The person born with a talent they are meant to use will find their greatest happiness in using it.

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Every day we should hear at least one little song, read one good poem, see one exquisite picture, and, if possible, speak a few sensible words.

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Wild dreams torment me as I lie. And though a god lives in my heart, though all my power waken at his word, though he can move my every inmost part - yet nothing in the outer world is stirred. thus by existence tortured and oppressed I crave for death, I long for rest.

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

This is the highest wisdom that I own; freedom and life are earned by those alone who conquer them each day anew.

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

The soul that sees beauty may sometimes walk alone.

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Self-knowledge comes from knowing other men.

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Love does not dominate; it cultivates.

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

I love those who yearn for the impossible.

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Difficulties increase the nearer we get to the goal.

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Beauty is a manifestation of secret natural laws, which otherwise would have been hidden from us forever.

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Personality is everything in art and poetry.

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

The best government is that which teaches us to govern ourselves.

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Beauty is everywhere a welcome guest.

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Wood burns because it has the proper stuff in it; and a man becomes famous because he has the proper stuff in him.

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Few people have the imagination for reality.

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Go to foreign countries and you will get to know the good things one possesses at home.

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

All intelligent thoughts have already been thought; what is necessary is only to try to think them again.

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

If I love you, what business is it of yours?

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

The credit of advancing science has always been due to individuals and never to the age.

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

To witness two lovers is a spectacle for the gods.

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

All the knowledge I possess everyone else can acquire, but my heart is all my own.

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Knowing is not enough; we must apply. Willing is not enough; we must do.

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Instruction does much, but encouragement everything.

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

I hold to faith in the divine love — which, so many years ago for a brief moment in a little corner of the earth, walked about as a man bearing the name of Jesus Christ — as the foundation on which alone my happiness rests.

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

One lives but once in the world.

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Those who hope for no other life are dead even for this.

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Getting along with women, Thus one goes through the world.

— 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

Noble be man, On earth.

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

As great, everlasting, Of our existence.

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

There are only two lasting bequests we can hope to give our children. One of these is roots, the other, wings.

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Only mankind To the moment.

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Let the noble man For those beings whom he surmises.

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

A noble person attracts noble people, and knows how to hold on to them.

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

It is after all the greatest art to limit and isolate oneself.

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

A talent is formed in stillness, a character in the world's torrent.

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Girls we love for what they are; young men for what they promise to be.

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

We can't form our children on our own concepts; we must take them and love them as God gives them to us.

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

The spirits that I summoned upI now can't rid myself of.

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

This is the highest wisdom that I own; freedom and life are earned by those alone who conquer them each day anew.

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

One of the most striking signs of the decay of art is the intermixing of different genres.

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

The true, prescriptive artist strives after artistic truth; the lawless artist, following blind instinct, after an appearance of naturalness. The one leads to the highest peaks of art, the other to its lowest depths.

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

In limitations he first shows himself the master,And the law can only bring us freedom.

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Character develops itself in the stream of life.

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

One never goes so far as when one doesn't know where one is going.

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

I have often felt a bitter sorrow at the thought of the German people, which is so estimable in the individual and so wretched in the generality. A comparison of the German people with other peoples arouses a painful feeling, which I try to overcome in every possible way.

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Self-knowledge comes from knowing other men.

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Patriotism ruins history.

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Who wants to understand the poemMust go to the poet's land.

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

For I have been a man, and that means to have been a fighter.

— 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

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

I am more and more convinced that poetry is the universal possession of mankind, revealing itself everywhere and at all times in hundreds and hundreds of men. ... I therefore like to look about me in foreign nations, and advise everyone to do the same. National literature is now a rather unmeaning term; the epoch of world literature is at hand, and everyone must strive to hasten its approach.

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

One must be something in order to do something.

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

I have found a paper of mine among some others in which I call architecture 'petrified music.' Really there is something in this; the tone of mind produced by architecture approaches the effect of music.

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Life belongs to the living, and he who lives must be prepared for changes.

— 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

The artist may be well advised to keep his work to himself till it is completed, because no one can readily help him or advise him with it...but the scientist is wiser not to withhold a single finding or a single conjecture from publicity.

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

O'er all the hilltopsThou too shalt rest.

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Who is the happiest of men? He who values the merits of others, Even at setting, the sun is still the same glorious planet.

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

And now the sagacious reader, who is capable of reading into these lines what does not stand written in them, but is nevertheless implied, will be able to form some conception of the serious feelings with which I then set foot in Emmendingen.

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

He is a prophet and not a poet and therefore his Koran is to be seen as Divine Law, and not as a book of a human being made for education or entertainment.

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Knowing is not enough; we must apply. Willing is not enough; we must do.

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

No matter how far our spiritual culture may continue to progress, no matter how much the natural sciences may grow, becoming ever more profound and more inclusive, no matter how much the human spirit may will to expand, that human spirit will never escape from the majesty and ethical sublimity of Christianity, as it shimmers and shines in the Gospels.

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Personality is everything in art and poetry.

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Young Schopenhauer, a zealous and thorough-going Kantian, tried to explain that light would cease to exist along with the seeing eye. "What!" he said, according to Schopenhauer's own report, "looking at him with his Jove-like eyes,"—"You should rather say that you would not exist if the light could not see you?"

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

However often we turn to it [the Qur'an] at first disgusting us each time afresh, it soon attracts, astounds, and in the end enforces our reverence... Its style, in accordance with its contents and aim is stern, grand, terrible — ever and anon truly sublime — Thus this book will go on exercising through all ages a most potent influence.

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Knowst thou the land where the lemon trees bloom,And the groves are of laurel and myrtle and rose?

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

What's it to you if I love you?

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

One ought, every day at least, to hear a little song, read a good poem, see a fine picture, and, if it were possible, to speak a few reasonable words.

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

At the moment of commitment the entire universe conspires to assist you.

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

To know of someone here and there whom we accord with, who is living on with us, even in silence — this makes our earthly ball a peopled garden.

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Love and desire are the spirit's wings to great deeds.

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Seeking with the soul the land of the Greeks.

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

One says a lot in vain, refusing;The other mainly hears the "No."

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Pleasure and love are the pinions of great deeds.

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Life teaches us to be less harsh with ourselves and with others.

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Tell me you stones, O speak, you towering palaces!Eternal Rome, it's only for me all is still.

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Happiness is a ball after which we run wherever it rolls, and we push it with our feet when it stops.

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

I'm gazing at church and palace, ruin and column,The world isn't the world, and Rome can't be Rome.

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free.

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Ah, how often I've cursed those foolish pages,His sad ghost could hardly have persecuted me more.

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

The artist alone sees spirits. But after he has told of their appearing to him, everybody sees them.

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

A world without love would be no world.

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Beloved, don't fret that you gave yourself so quickly!Desire followed a look, and joy followed desire.

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Science arose from poetry... when times change the two can meet again on a higher level as friends.

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

I feel I'm happily inspired now on Classical soil:Of her lovely breasts: her hips guiding my hand?

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

All Nine often used to come to me, I mean the Muses:Greetings, Boredom, mother of the Muse.

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

It is the strange fate of man, that even in the greatest of evils the fear of the worst continues to haunt him.

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Is it so big a mystery so the mystery hangs on.

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Much there is I can stand. Most things not easy to sufferThese four: tobacco smoke, bedbugs and garlic and Christ.

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Much there is I can stand, and most things not easy to suffer These four: tobacco smoke, bedbugs, garlic, and †.

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Death is a commingling of eternity with time; in the death of a good man, eternity is seen looking through time.

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Doesn't surprise me that Christ our Lord I go in for that myself.

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Just trust yourself, then you will know how to live.

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

I call architecture frozen music.

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Three things are to be looked to in a building: that it stand on the right spot; that it be securely founded; that it be successfully executed.

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

The sum which two married people owe to one another defies calculation. It is an infinite debt, which can only be discharged through all eternity.

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

One is never satisfied with a portrait of a person that one knows.

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

The fate of the architect is the strangest of all. How often he expends his whole soul, his whole heart and passion, to produce buildings into which he himself may never enter.

— 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

No one would talk much in society, if he knew how often he misunderstands others.

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

A teacher who can arouse a feeling for one single good action, for one single good poem, accomplishes more than he who fills our memory with rows on rows of natural objects, classified with name and form.

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

My son, whoever wishes to keep a secret, must hide from us that he possesses one. Self complaisance over the concealed destroys its concealment.

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Law is mighty, mightier necessity.

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Once a man's thirty, he's already old,It's best to kill him right away.

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

What wise or stupid thing can man conceiveThat was not thought of in ages long ago?

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

I love those who yearn for the impossible.

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

The deed is everything, the glory nothing.

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Behaviour is a mirror in which everyone shows his image.

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Mysteries do not as yet amount to miracles.

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

It is after all the greatest art to limit and isolate oneself.

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Just as, out of habit, one consults a run-down clock as though it were still going, so too one may look at the face of a beautiful woman as though she were still in love.

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

You really only know when you know little. Doubt grows with knowledge.

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

The mediator of the inexpressible is the work of art.

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

The first and last thing demanded of genius is love of truth.

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Translators are like busy match-makers: they sing the praises of some half-veiled beauty, and extol her charms, and arouse an irresistible longing for the original.

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Theories usually result from the precipitate reasoning of an impatient mind which would like to be rid of phenomena and replaces them with images, concepts, indeed often with mere words.

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

There's nothing clever that hasn't been thought of before — you've just got to try to think it all over again.

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

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

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Piety is not an end but a means to attain by the greatest peace of mind the highest degree of culture.

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

This is why we may say that those who parade piety as a purpose and an aim mostly turn into hypocrites

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

When you see some evil you proceed to immediate action, you make an immediate attack to cure the symptom.

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

A mathematician is only perfect insofar as he is a perfect man, sensitive to the beauty of truth.

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

The desire to explain what is simple by what is complex, what is easy by what is difficult, is a calamity affecting the whole body of science, known, it is true, to men of insight, but not generally admitted.

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Nothing is more damaging to a new truth than an old error.

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

I see no end to my misery but the grave.

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Individuality of expression is the beginning and end of all art.

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

A thinking man's greatest happiness is to have fathomed what can be fathomed and to revere in silence what cannot be fathomed.

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Hypotheses are scaffoldings erected in front of a building and then dismantled when the building is finished. They are indispensable for the workman; but you mustn't mistake the scaffolding for the building.

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Life belongs to the living, and he who lives must be prepared for changes.

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Age merely shows what children we remain.

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

He is happiest, be he king or peasant, who finds peace in his home.

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

If God had wanted me otherwise, He would have created me otherwise.

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Dream no small dreams for they have no power to move the hearts of men.

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

I do not know myself, and God forbid that I should.

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

We know accurately only when we know little, with knowledge doubt increases.

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Many people take no care of their money till they come nearly to the end of it, and others do just the same with their time.

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

He only earns his freedom and his life Who takes them every day by storm.

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Doubt grows with knowledge.

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

All theory, dear friend, is gray, but the golden tree of life springs ever green.

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Thinking is more interesting than knowing, but less interesting than looking.

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

He who possesses art and science has religion; he who does not possess them, needs religion.

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

What is important in life is life, and not the result of life.

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

The best government is that which teaches us to govern ourselves.

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Nothing is more fearful than imagination without taste.

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

To rule is easy, to govern difficult.

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Dream no small dreams for they have no power to move the hearts of men.

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Every day we should hear at least one little song, read one good poem, see one exquisite picture, and, if possible, speak a few sensible words.

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

The soul that sees beauty may sometimes walk alone.

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Being brilliant is no great feat if you respect nothing.

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Great thoughts and a pure heart, that is what we should ask from God.

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Ignorant men raise questions that wise men answered a thousand years ago.

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

He who does not think much of himself is much more esteemed than he imagines.

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

All things are only transitory.

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

What is uttered from the heart alone, Will win the hearts of others to your own.

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Nothing is worth more than this day.

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Naturalists tell of a noble race of horses that instinctively open a vein with their teeth, when heated and exhausted by a long course, in order to breathe more freely. I am often tempted to open a vein, to procure for myself everlasting liberty.

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

If I love you, what business is it of yours?

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe