Quotes by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Napoleon affords us an example of the danger of elevating one's self to the absolute, and sacrificing everything to the carrying out of an idea.
Love is an ideal thing, marriage a real thing; a confusion of the real with the ideal never goes unpunished.
Taste is only to be educated by contemplation, not of the tolerably good but of the truly excellent. I therefore show you only the best works; and when you are grounded in these, you will have a standard for the rest, which you will know how to value, without overrating them.
If you start to think about your physical or moral condition, you usually find that you are sick
You are aware of only one unrest;Oh, never to learn the other!Two souls, alas, are dwelling in my breast,And one is striving to forsake its brother.
If I love you, what business is it of yours?
All theory, dear friend, is gray, but the golden tree of life springs ever green.
The mediator of the inexpressible is the work of art.
Hatred is something peculiar. You will always find it strongest and most violent where there is the lowest degree of culture.
If God had wanted me otherwise, He would have created me otherwise.
All the knowledge I possess everyone else can acquire, but my heart is all my own.
What life half gives a man, posterity gives entirely.
Who is the wisest man? He who neither knows or wishes for anything else than what happens.
The deed is everything, the glory naught.
I call architecture frozen music.
The hardest thing to see is what is in front of your eyes.
None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free.
Every author in some way portrays himself in his works, even if it be against his will.
None are so hopelessly enslaved as those who falsely believe they are free.
What is my life if I am no longer useful to others.
Men show their character in nothing more clearly than what they think laughable.
Wood burns because it has the proper stuff in it; and a man becomes famous because he has the proper stuff in him.
The little man is still a man.
Destiny grants us our wishes, but in its own way, in order to give us something beyond our wishes.
Unlike grown ups, children have little need to deceive themselves.
