Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe Quotes

Treat people the way they are and they will stay that way. Treat people the way they can become and they will become that way.

If you treat an individual as he is, he will remain how he is. But if you treat him as if he were what he ought to be and could be, he will become what he ought to be and could be.

No one feels himself easy in a garden which does not look like the open country.

The Woman-Soul leadeth us upward and on!

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.

One who has passed the thirtieth year
already is as good as dead
it would be best to kill you off by then.

Energy is the basis of everything. Every Jew, no matter how insignificant, is engaged in some decisive and immediate pursuit of a goal ... It is the most perpetual people of the earth ...

Misunderstandings and neglect create more confusion in this world than trickery and malice. At any rate, the last two are certainly much less frequent.

Your suns and worlds are not within my ken,
I merely watch the plaguey state of men.
The little god of earth remains the same queer sprite
As on the first day, or in primal light.
His life would be less difficult, poor thing,
Without your gift of heavenly glimmering;
He calls it Reason, using light celestial
Just to outdo the beasts in being bestial.
To me he seems, with deference to Your Grace,
One of those crickets, jumping round the place,
Who takes his flying leaps, with legs so long,
Then falls to grass and chants the same old song;
But, not content with grasses to repose in,
This one will hunt for muck to stick his nose in.

One cannot escape the world more certainly through art, and one cannot bind oneself to it more certainly than through art

So all in their different fashions pursued their daily lives, thoughtfully or not; everything seemed to be following is usual course, as is the way in monstrously strange circumstances when everything is at stake: we go on with our lives as though nothing were the matter.

Fortunately, we can take in only so much misfortune; what exceeds that limit either destroys us or leaves us indifferent.

This life, gentlemen, is too short for our souls.

He who only tastes his error will long dwell with it, will take delight in it as in a singular felicity; while he who drains it to the dregs will, if he be not crazy, find it to be what it is.

The destiny of any nation at any given time depends on the opinion of its young people, those under twenty-five.

What sort of faults may we retain, nay, even cherish in ourselves? Those faults which are rather pleasant than offensive to others.

Nothing is more odious than the majority, for it consists of a few powerful leaders, a certain number of accommodating scoundrels and submissive weaklings, and a mass of men who trot after them without thinking, or knowing their own minds.

The older we get the more we must limit ourselves if we wish to be active.

Man would not be the finest creature in the world if he were not too fine for it.

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

He who is resolute conquers grief.

The flowers of life are but illusions. How many fade away and leave no trace.

Do people conform to the instructions of us old ones? Each thinks he must know best about himself, and thus many are lost entirely.

Our mistakes and failures are always the first to strike us, and outweigh in our imagination what we have accomplished and attained.

One must keep repeating the Truth.

If you are to accomplish all that one demands of you, you must overestimate your own worth.

All things are only transitory.

Each indecision brings its own delays and days are lost lamenting over lost days. Whatever you can do or think you can do, begin it. For boldness has magic, power, and genius in it.

I always had an aversion to your apostles of freedom; each but sought for himself freedom to do what he liked.

Hatred is something peculiar. You will always find it strongest and most violent where there is the lowest degree of culture.

I am certain that I have been here as I am now a thousand times before, and I hope to return a thousand times.

For what one has in black and white, One can carry home in comfort.

I respect the man who knows distinctly what he wants.

Every step of life shows much caution is required.

[Wagner] But the world, the hearts and minds of humankind,
Are subjects all men want to know about.
[Faust] What they call knowing, that I do not doubt.
But who dares speak his honest mind?
The few who ever did know anything
And we're such fools they gave their hearts free rein
And showed the mob what they had felt and seen,
Death on the cross they got or death by burning.

His easy going behavior contrasts greatly with my restlessness

By nature we have no defect that could not become a strength, no strength that could not become a defect.

Nature reacts not only to physical disease, but also to moral weakness; when the danger increases; she gives us greater courage

One must submit, like a traveller who has to ascend a mountain: if the mountain was not there, the road would be both shorter and pleasanter; but there it is, and he must get over it.

MARGARETE. Yes, out of sight is out of mind. It's second nature with you, gallantry; But you have friends of every kind, Cleverer by far, oh much, than me. FAUST. Dear girl, believe me, what's called cleverness Is mostly shallowness and vanity.

He loves not who does not see the faults of the beloved as virtues.

Few are open to conviction, but the majority of men are open to persuasion

He who is firm and resolute in will molds the world to himself.

Nature is so perfect that the Trinity couldn't have fashioned her any more perfect. She is an organ on which our Lord plays and the devil works the bellows.

Remember to live.

Nothing is worse than active ignorance.

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

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.

Since I have been obliged to associate continually with other people, and observe what they do, and how they employ themselves, I have become far better satisfied with myself.

Where is the man who has the strength to be true, and to show himself as he is?

The threshold is the place of expectation.

Those who know nothing of foreign languages know nothing of their own.

Magic is believing in yourself, if you can do that, you can make anything happen.

When one is polite in German, one lies.

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?

They make life unnecessarily difficult for themselves by looking for deep thoughts and ideas everywhere and putting them into everything. just have the courage to
give yourself up to first impressions..don't think all the time that
everything must be pointless if it lacks an abstract thought or idea

Toleration ought in reality to be merely a transitory mood. It must lead to recognition. To tolerate is to affront.

As soon as you trust yourself, you will know how to live.

School-boy. The spectators thou regardest as on work-days they regard each other. For thee, then, it may be well to wish thyself behind a desk, over ruled ledgers, collecting tolls, and picking out reversions. Thou feelest not the co-operating, co-inspiring

Mistrust all those in whom the desire to punish is imperative - Goethe

We should know mankind better if we were not so anxious to resemble one another.

Self-knowledge comes from knowing other men.

A stated truth loses its grace, but a repeated error appears insipid and ridiculous.

The human mind will not be confined to any limits.

Beauty can never really understand itself.

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.

Superstition is the poetry of life.

Water its living strength first shows, When obstacles its course oppose.

A man who cannot command himself will always be a slave.

When we treat man as he is we make him worse than he is.
When we treat him as if he already was what he potentially could be
We make him what he should be.

If everyone sweeps before his own front door, then the street is clean.

The use of a thing is only a part of its significance. To know anything thoroughly, to have the full command of it in all its appliances, we must study it on its own account, independently of any special application.

Human beings are much of a muchness. Most spend th greater part of their time working in order to live, and what bit of freedom they are left with makes them so anxious they strive by all available means to be rid of it.

There is nothing worth thinking but it has been thought before; we must only try to think it again.

Colors are light's suffering and joy

In the end we retain from our studies only that which we practically apply.

Age merely shows what children we remain.

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

When intelligent and sensible people despise knowledge in their old age, it is only because they have asked too much of it and of themselves.

nothing is more frightful than to see ignorance in action

To quit smoking, you must first want to quit, but then you must also do the quitting

Beauty vanishes; virtue is lasting.

Gifts come from above in their own peculiar forms.

Sin writes histories, goodness is silent.

Ask whomever you will but you'll never find out where I'm lodging

It is the great triumph of genius to make the common appear novel.

I do not now begin,
I still adore
Her whom I early cherish'd in my breast;
Then once again with prudence dispossess'd,
And to whose heart I'm driven back once more.
The love of Petrarch, that all-glorious love,
Was unrequited, and, alas, full sad ...

For only to the extent that we empathize do we have the right to speak about a matter.

If society gives up the right to impose the death penalty, then self-help will appear again and personal vendettas will be around the corner.

Man believes himself always greater than he is, and is esteemed less than he is worth.

Ambition and love are the wings of great actions.

When I say to the Moment flying;
'Linger a while
thou art so fair!'
Then bind me in thy bonds undying,
And my final ruin I will bear!

Divide and rule, a sound motto. Unite and lead, a better one.

Talk well of the absent whenever you have the opportunity.

Faith is like private capital, stored in one's own house. It is like a public savings bank or loan office, from which individuals receive assistance in their days of need; but here the creditor quietly takes his interest for himself.

If a man or woman is born ten years sooner or later, their whole aspect and performance shall be different.

If we examine every stage of our lives, we find that from our first breath to our last we are under the constraint of circumstances. And yet we still possess the greatest of all freedoms, the power of developing our innermost selves in harmony with the moral order of the universe, and so winning peace of heart whatever obstacles we meet.

Against criticism a man can neither protest nor defend himself; he must act in spite of it, and then it will gradually yield to him.

The beginning of faith is the beginning of fruitfulness; but the beginning of unbelief, however glittering, is empty.

Few rash of any modern nation have a proper sense of an aesthetical whole; they praise and blame by parts; they are charmed by passages. And who has greater reason to rejoice in this than actors, since the stage is ever but a patched and piecemeal matter?