It seems to never occur to fools that merit and good fortune are closely united.
– Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Know thyself? If I knew myself I would run away.
– Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Knowing is not enough; we must apply. Willing is not enough; we must do.
– Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Let everyone sweep in front of his own door, and the whole world will be clean.
– Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Letters are among the most significant memorial a person can leave behind them.
– Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Life belongs to the living, and he who lives must be prepared for changes.
– Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Life has been compared to a race, but the allusion improves by observing, that the most swift are usually the least manageable and the most likely to stray from the course. Great abilities have always been less serviceable to the possessors than moderate ones.
– Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Life is the childhood of our immortality.
– Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Live dangerously and you live right.
– Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Look closely at those who patronize you. Half are unfeeling, half untaught.
– Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Love and desire are the spirit's wings to great deeds.
– Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Love can do much, but duty more.
– Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Love does not dominate; it cultivates.
– Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Magic is believing in yourself, if you can do that, you can make anything happen.
– Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Man is made by his belief. As he believes, so he is.
– 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
Master and Doctor are my titles; for ten years now, without repose, I held my erudite recitals and led my pupils by the nose.
– Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Mastery passes often for egotism.
– Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Mathematicians are like Frenchmen: whatever you say to them they translate into their own language and forthwith it is something entirely different.
– Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
My poor head is in such a whirl, my mind is all in bits.
– Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Mysteries are not necessarily miracles.
– 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.
– Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Nature knows no pause in progress and development, and attaches her curse on all inaction.
– Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
No one has ever learned fully to know themselves.
– Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
No one would talk much in society if they knew how often they misunderstood others.
– Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
No wise combatant underestimates their antagonist.
– Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
None are so hopelessly enslaved as those who falsely believe they are free.
– Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Not the maker of plans and promises, but rather the one who offers faithful service in small matters. This is the person who is most likely to achieve what is good and lasting.
– Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Nothing is more fearful than imagination without taste.
– Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Nothing is to be rated higher than the value of the day.
– Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Nothing is worth more than this day.
– Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Nothing shows a man's character more than what he laughs at.
– Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Objects in pictures should so be arranged as by their very position to tell their own story.
– Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
On all the peaks lies peace.
– Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
One always has time enough, if one will apply it well.
– Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
One can be instructed in society, one is inspired only in solitude.
– Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
One must ask children and birds how cherries and strawberries taste.
– Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Oral delivery aims at persuasion and making the listener believe they are converted. Few persons are capable of being convinced; the majority allow themselves to be persuaded.
– Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Our passion are the true phoenixes; when the old one is burnt out, a new one rises from its ashes.
– Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Passions are vices or virtues to their highest powers.
– Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
People are so constituted that everybody would rather undertake what they see others do, whether they have an aptitude for it or not.
– Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
People have a peculiar pleasure in making converts, that is, in causing others to enjoy what they enjoy, thus finding their own likeness represented and reflected back to them.
– Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
People of uncommon abilities generally fall into eccentricities when their sphere of life is not adequate to their abilities.
– Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
People should talk less and draw more. Personally, I would like to renounce speech altogether and, like organic nature, communicate everything I have to say visually.
– Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Personality is everything in art and poetry.
– Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Plunge boldly into the thick of life, and seize it where you will, it is always interesting.
– Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Precaution is better than cure.
– Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Progress has not followed a straight ascending line, but a spiral with rhythms of progress and retrogression, of evolution and dissolution.
– Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Reason can never be popular. Passions and feelings may become popular, but reason will always remain the sole property of a few eminent individuals.
– 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
Science has been seriously retarded by the study of what is not worth knowing and of what is not knowable.
– Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Self-knowledge comes from knowing other men.
– Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Self-love exaggerates our faults as well as our virtues.
– Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Sometimes our fate resembles a fruit tree in winter. Who would think that those branches would turn green again and blossom, but we hope it, we know it.
– Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Sowing is not as difficult as reaping.
– Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Still this planet's soil for noble deeds grants scope abounding.
– Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Strike the dog dead, it's but a critic!
– Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Superstition is the poetry of life.
– Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Take care of your body with steadfast fidelity. The soul must see through these eyes alone, and if they are dim, the whole world is clouded.
– Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Talent develops in quiet places, character in the full current of human life.
– Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Talents are best nurtured in solitude. Character is best formed in the stormy billows of the world.
– Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Talk well of the absent whenever you have the opportunity.
– 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
The best government is that which teaches us to govern ourselves.
– Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
The biggest problem with every art is by the use of appearance to create a loftier reality.
– Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
The bird alighteth not on the spread net when it beholds another bird in the snare. Take warning by the misfortunes of others, that others may not take example from you.
– Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
The Christian religion, though scattered and abroad will in the end gather itself together at the foot of the cross.
– Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
The coward only threatens when he is safe.
– Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
The credit of advancing science has always been due to individuals and never to the age.
– Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
The decline of literature indicates the decline of a nation.
– Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
The deed is everything, the glory is naught.
– Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
The formation of one's character ought to be everyone's chief aim.
– Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
The hardest thing to see is what is in front of your eyes.
– Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
The highest happiness of man is to have probed what is knowable and quietly to revere what is unknowable.
– Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
The human mind will not be confined to any limits.
– Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
The intelligent man finds almost everything ridiculous, the sensible man hardly anything.
– Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
The little man is still a man.
– Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
The man who occupies the first place seldom plays the principal part.
– Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
The man with insight enough to admit his limitations comes nearest to perfection.
– Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
The mediator of the inexpressible is the work of art.
– Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
The most happy man is he who knows how to bring into relation the end and beginning of his life.
– Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
The most original of authors are not so because they advance what is new, but more because they know how to say something, as if it had never been said before.
– Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
The people who are absent are the ideal; those who are present seem to be quite commonplace.
– 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
The person of analytic or critical intellect finds something ridiculous in everything. The person of synthetic or constructive intellect, in almost nothing.
– Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
The phrases that men hear or repeat continually, end by becoming convictions and ossify the organs of intelligence.
– Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
The really unhappy person is the one who leaves undone what they can do, and starts doing what they don't understand; no wonder they come to grief.
– Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
The right man is the one who seizes the moment.
– Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
The soul that sees beauty may sometimes walk alone.
– Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
The unnatural, that too is natural.
– Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
The Woman-Soul leadeth us upward and on!
– Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
The world is so empty if one thinks only of mountains, rivers and cities; but to know someone here and there who thinks and feels with us, and though distant, is close to us in spirit - this makes the earth for us an inhabited garden.
– Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
The world remains ever the same.
– Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
There is a courtesy of the heart; it is allied to love. From its springs the purest courtesy in the outward behavior.
– Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
There is no past that we can bring back by longing for it. There is only an eternally new now that builds and creates itself out of the Best as the past withdraws.
– Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
There is nothing in the world more shameful than establishing one's self on lies and fables.
– Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
There is nothing in which people more betray their character than in what they laugh at.
– Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
They travel with a constant companion, autumn.
– Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Thinking is easy, acting is difficult, and to put one's thoughts into action is the most difficult thing in the world.
– Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Thinking is more interesting than knowing, but less interesting than looking.