Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Quotes - Page 2

It is ever true that he who does nothing for others, does nothing for himself.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
if only these treasures were not so fragile as they are precious and beautiful.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
I think of you when upon the sea the sun flings her beams. I think of you when the moonlight shines in silvery streams. I see you when upon the distant hills the dust awakes; At night when on a fragile bridge the traveler quakes.I hear you when the blows rise on high, with murmur deep. To tread the silent grove where wander I, When all's asleep.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
I think of you when upon the sea the sun flings her beams.I think of you when the moonlight shines in silvery streams.I see you when upon the distant hills the dust awakes;At night when on a fragile bridge the traveler quakes.I hear you when the billows rise on high,With murmur deep.To tread the silent grove where wander I,When all's asleep.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Each one sees what he carries in his heart.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
A mans manners are a mirror in which he shows his portrait.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Do not give in too much to feelings. A overly sensitive heart is an unhappy possession on this shaky earth.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Du hast so viele Leben, wie du Sprachen sprichst. (You have as many lives as the number of languages you speak.)
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Because everyone uses language to talk, everyone thinks they can talk about language.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Art is long, life short, judgment difficult, opportunity transient. To act is easy, to think is hard; to act according to our thought is troublesome.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Moreover I hate everything which merely instructs me without increasing or directly quickening my activity.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
It is not easy in this world for one person to understand the next one.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
I am the spirit that negates.And rightly so, for all that comes to beDeserves to perish wretchedly;'Twere better nothing would begin.Thus everything that that your terms, sin,Destruction, evil represent—That is my proper element.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Who are you then?" "I am part of that power which eternally wills evil and eternally works good.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
If I wasn't a devil myself I'd give Me up to the Devil this very minute.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
All force strives forward to work far and wideTo live and grow and ever to expand;Yet we are checked and thwarted on each sideBy the world's flux and swept along like sand:In this internal storm and outward tideWe hear a promise, hard to understand:From the compulsion that all creatures binds,Who overcomes himself, his freedom finds.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
By Fortune's adverse buffets overborneTo solitude I fled, to wilds forlorn,And not in utter loneliness to live,Myself at last did to the Devil give!
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
No one has ever properly understood me, I have never fully understood anyone; and no one understands anyone else
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Once we are lost unto ourselves, everything else is lost to us.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
We are all pilgrims who seek Italy.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Everything is just how I imagined it, yet everything is new
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
But there are times," said Charlotte, "when it is necessary and an act of friendship to write nothing rather than not to write.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Magic is believing in yourself, if you can do that, you can make anything happen.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
When a human awakens to a great dream and throws the full force of his soul over it, all the universe conspires in your favor.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Whilst I could not think of any man whose spirit was, or needed to be, more enlarged than the spirit of a genuine merchant. What a thing it is to see the order which prevails throughout his business! By means of this he can at any time survey the general whole, without needing to perplex himself in the details. What advantages does he derive from the system of book-keeping by double entry? It is among the finest inventions of the human mind; every prudent master of a house should introduce it into his economy.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Only air and light and the love of friends! Let no man lose heart who still has these.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Must it so be that whatever makes man happy must later become the source of his misery?
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
And when I look around the apartment where I now am,—when I see Charlotte’s apparel lying before me, and Albert’s writings, and all those articles of furniture which are so familiar to me, even to the very inkstand which I am using,—when I think what I am to this family—everything. My friends esteem me; I often contribute to their happiness, and my heart seems as if it could not beat without them; and yet—if I were to die, if I were to be summoned from the midst of this circle, would they feel—or how long would they feel—the void which my loss would make in their existence? How long! Yes, such is the frailty of man, that even there, where he has the greatest consciousness of his own being, where he makes the strongest and most forcible impression, even in the memory, in the heart of his beloved, there also he must perish,—vanish,—and that quickly.I could tear open my bosom with vexation to think how little we are capable of influencing the feelings of each other. No one can communicate to me those sensations of love, joy, rapture, and delight which I do not naturally possess; and though my heart may glow with the most lively affection, I cannot make the happiness of one in whom the same warmth is not inherent.Sometimes I don’t understand how another can love her, is allowed to love her, since I love her so completely myself, so intensely, so fully, grasp nothing, know nothing, have nothing but her!I possess so much, but my love for her absorbs it all. I possess so much, but without her I have nothing.One hundred times have I been on the point of embracing her. Heavens! what a torment it is to see so much loveliness passing and repassing before us, and yet not dare to lay hold of it! And laying hold is the most natural of human instincts. Do not children touch everything they see? And I!Witness, Heaven, how often I lie down in my bed with a wish, and even a hope, that I may never awaken again! And in the morning, when I open my eyes, I behold the sun once more, and am wretched. If I were whimsical, I might blame the weather, or an acquaintance, or some personal disappointment, for my discontented mind; and then this insupportable load of trouble would not rest entirely upon myself. But, alas! I feel it too sadly; I am alone the cause of my own woe, am I not? Truly, my own bosom contains the source of all my pleasure. Am I not the same being who once enjoyed an excess of happiness, who at every step saw paradise open before him, and whose heart was ever expanded towards the whole world? And this heart is now dead; no sentiment can revive it. My eyes are dry; and my senses, no more refreshed by the influence of soft tears, wither and consume my brain. I suffer much, for I have lost the only charm of life: that active, sacred power which created worlds around me,—it is no more. When I look from my window at the distant hills, and behold the morning sun breaking through the mists, and illuminating the country around, which is still wrapped in silence, whilst the soft stream winds gently through the willows, which have shed their leaves; when glorious Nature displays all her beauties before me, and her wondrous prospects are ineffectual to extract one tear of joy from my withered heart,—I feel that in such a moment I stand like a reprobate before heaven, hardened, insensible, and unmoved. Oftentimes do I then bend my knee to the earth, and implore God for the blessing of tears, as the desponding labourer in some scorching climate prays for the dews of heaven to moisten his parched corn.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
When I go out by the gateway, taking the road I drove along that first time I picked up Lotte for the ball, how very different it all is! It is all over, all of it! There is not a hint of the world that once was, not one bulse-beat of those past emotions. I feel like a ghost returning to the burnt-out ruins of the castle he built in his prime as a prince, which he adorned with magnificent splendours and then, on his deathbed, but full of hope, left to his beloved son
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
We really learn only from those books that we cannot judge. The author of a book that we were able to judge would have to learn from us.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
We look back on our life as a thing of broken pieces, because our mistakes and failures are always the first to strike us, and outweigh in our imagination what we have accomplished and attained.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
I could be living the best and happiest of lives if only I were not a fool.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
God knows I often retire to my bed wishing (at times even hoping) that I might never wake up; and in the morning I open my eyes, see the sun once again, and am miserable.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
It seems it has been my fate to sadden those I should have made happy.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
The limits of my language are the limits of my universe.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
I was on the point of breaking off the conversation, for nothing puts me so completely out of patience as the utterance of a wretched commonplace when I am talking from my inmost heart.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
nothing puts me so completely out of patience as the utterance of a wretched commonplace when I am talking from my inmost heart.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Literature decays only as men become more and more corrupt.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
If any man wish to write in a clear style, let him be first clear in his thoughts; and if any would write in a noble style, let him first possess a noble soul.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Then indecision brings its own delays, And days are lost lamenting over lost days. Are you in earnest? Seize this very minute; What you can do, or dream you can do, begin it; Boldness has genius, power and magic in it.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
What is the destiny of man, but to fill up the measure of his sufferings, and to drink his allotted cup of bitterness?
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
When a nation which has long groaned under the intolerable yoke of a tyrant rises at last and throws off its chains, do you call that weakness? The man who, to rescue his house from the flames, finds his physical strength redoubled, so that he lifts burdens with ease which in the absence of excitement he could scarcely move; he who under the rage of an insult attacks and puts to flight half a score of his enemies,—are such persons to be called weak? My good friend, if resistance be strength, how can the highest degree of resistance be a weakness?
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
The affairs of the world are no more than so much trickery, and a man who toils for money or honour or whatever else in deference to the wishes of others, rather than because his own desire or needs lead him to do so, will always be a fool.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
We often feel that we lack something, and seem to see that very quality in someone else, promptly attributing all our own qualities to him too, and a kind of ideal contentment as well. And so the happy mortal is a model of complete perfection--which we have ourselves created.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
No one is willing to believe that adults too, like children, wander about this earth in a daze and, like children, do not know where they come from or where they are going, act as rarely as they do according to genuine motives, and are as thoroughly governed as they are by biscuits and cake and the rod.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
And while throughout the self same motion Repeated on forever flows The thousandfold o er arching ocean Its strong embrace around all throws Streams through all things the joy of living The least star thrilleth fond accord And all their crowding all their striving Is endless rest in God the Lord. - - -GER:Wenn im Unendlichen dasselbeSich wiederholend ewig fließt,Das tausendfältige GewölbeSich kräftig ineinander schließt,Strömt Lebenslust aus allen Dingen,Dem kleinsten wie dem größten SternUnd alles Drängen, alles RingenIst ewige Ruh in Gott dem Herrn.Zahme Xenien VI.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
I possess so much, but my love for her absorbs it all. I possess so much, but without her I have nothing.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Let everyone sweep in front of his own door, and the whole world will be clean.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
The world admires wealth and velocity—these are the things for which everyone strives. Railroads, the post, steamboats, and all possible modes of communication are the means by which the world overeducates itself and freezes itself in mediocrity.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
You are aware of only one unrest;Oh, never learn to know the other!Two souls, alas, are dwelling in my breast,And one is striving to forsake its brother.Unto the world in grossly loving zest,With clinging tendrils, one adheres;The other rises forcibly in questOf rarefied ancestral spheres.If there be spirits in the airThat hold their sway between the earth and sky,Descend out of the golden vapors thereAnd sweep me into iridescent life.Oh, came a magic cloak into my handsTo carry me to distant lands,I should not trade it for the choicest gown,Nor for the cloak and garments of the crown.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
What you feed in yourself that grows.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
To end the greatest work designed,A thousand hands need but one mind.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
All the knowledge I possess everyone else can acquire, but my heart is all my own.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Music is either sacred or profane. What is sacred accords completely with its nobility, and this is where music most immediately influences life; such influence remains unchanged at all times and in every epoch. Profane music should be altogether cheerful.Music of a kind that mixes the sacred with the profane is godless and shoddy music wich goes in for expressing feeble, wretched, deplorable feelings, and is just insipid. For it is not serious enough to be sacred and it lacks the chief quality of the opposite kind: cheerfulness.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
For in music there is no material to be deducted.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Love is an ideal thing, marriage a real thing.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
You must, in studying Nature, always consider both each single thing and the whole: nothing is inside and nothing is outside, for what is within is without. Make haste, then, to grasp this holy mystery which is public knowledge.Rejoice in the true illusion, in the serious game: no living thing is a unity, it is always manifold.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
The greatest evil that can befall man is that he should come to think ill of himself.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Colors are light's suffering and joy
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe