Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Quotes

They should be ashamed of themselves, all these sober people!

Was ich weiß, kann jeder wissen. Mein Herz hab' ich allein.

Talent develops in tranquility, character in the full current of human life.

Think of you! I do not think of you; you are always before my soul.

Das Ewig-Weibliche zieht uns hinan.

The fashion of this world passeth away and I would fain occupy myself with the things that are abiding.

There is no past we can bring back by longing for it. There is only an eternal now that builds and creates out of the past something new and better.

Who science has and art
He has religion too
Who neither of them owns
Religion is his due.

من هرگز در حسرت بال پرندگان نخواهم بود. جذبه های جانم، از کتابی به کتاب دیگر و از صفحه ای به صفحه ی دیگر مرا به جاهای بسیار دورتر می برند.

If you don't feel it, you'll never get it.

I feel I'm happily inspired now on Classical soil:
The Past and Present speak louder, more charmingly.
Here, as advised, I leaf through the works of the Ancients
With busy hands, and, each day, with fresh delight.
But at night Love keeps me busy another way:
I become half a scholar but twice as contented.
And am I not learning, studying the shape
Of her lovely breasts: her hips guiding my hand?

Wild dreams torment me as I lie. And though a god lives in my heart, though all my power waken at his word, though he can move my every inmost part - yet nothing in the outer world is stirred. thus by existence tortured and oppressed I crave for death, I long for rest.

When we take people,’ thou wouldst say, ‘merely as they are, we make them worse; when we treat them as if they were what they should be, we improve them as far as they can be improved.’

It is not given to us to grasp the truth, which is identical with the divine, directly. We perceive it only in reflection, in example and symbol, in singular and related appearances. It meets us as a kind of life which is incomprehensible to us, and yet we cannot free ourselves from the desire to comprehend it.

The greater part of all the mischief in the world arises from the fact that men do not sufficiently understand their own aims.