Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Quotes

There is nothing more frightful than ignorance in action.

Do you wish to roam farther and farther?
See the good that lies so near.
Just learn how to capture your luck,
for your luck is always there.

Mysteries do not as yet amount to miracles.

A world without love would be no world.

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.

Translation: As many languages you know, as many times you are a human being.

What is the destiny of man, but to fill up the measure of his sufferings, and to drink his allotted cup of bitterness?

Schön war ich auch, und das war mein Verderben.

I was oppressed with the sensations I then felt; I sunk under the weight of them.

Ich bedauere die Menschen, welche von der Vergänglichkeit der Dinge viel Wesens machen und sich in Betrachtung irdischer Nichtigkeit verlieren. Sind wir ja eben deßhalb da, um das Vergängliche unvergänglich zu machen; das kann ja nur dadurch geschehen, wenn man beides zu schätzen weiß.

Here too it’s masquerade, I find:
As everywhere, the dance of mind.
I grasped a lovely masked procession,
And caught things from a horror show…
I’d gladly settle for a false impression,
If it would last a little longer, though.

Whatever is the lot of humankind
I want to taste within my deepest self.
I want to seize the highest and the lowest,
to load its woe and bliss upon my breast,
and thus expand my single self titanically
and in the end go down with all the rest.

It is as certain as it is marvelous that truth and error come from one source. Therefore one often may not injure error, because at the same time one injures truth.

What we agree with leaves us inactive, but contradiction makes us productive.

A man sees in the world what he carries in his heart.