Quotes by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

"Age merely shows what children we remain."

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

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"Personality is everything in art and poetry."

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"The mediator of the inexpressible is the work of art."

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"In art the best is good enough."

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

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"The soul that sees beauty may sometimes walk alone."

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"Beauty is everywhere a welcome guest."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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"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."

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

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"To rule is easy, to govern difficult."

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

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

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

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"Few people have the imagination for reality."

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

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"Nothing is more fearful than imagination without taste."

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"Nothing is worth more than this day."

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"I love those who yearn for the impossible."

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

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"Doubt grows with knowledge."

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

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

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"Character develops itself in the stream of life."

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

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

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"To witness two lovers is a spectacle for the gods."

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"Love does not dominate; it cultivates."

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

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"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."

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

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"I call architecture frozen music."

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

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"Correction does much, but encouragement does more."

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

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

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"The Christian religion, though scattered and abroad will in the end gather itself together at the foot of the cross."

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"Being brilliant is no great feat if you respect nothing."

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"No one would talk much in society if they knew how often they misunderstood others."

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"One can be instructed in society, one is inspired only in solitude."

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"Only by joy and sorrow does a person know anything about themselves and their destiny. They learn what to do and what to avoid."

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

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"Wisdom is found only in truth."

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"The way you see people is the way you treat them, and the way you treat them is what they become."

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"Everything in the world may be endured except continual prosperity."

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"One must ask children and birds how cherries and strawberries taste."

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"Nature knows no pause in progress and development, and attaches her curse on all inaction."

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

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"Superstition is the poetry of life."

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