Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Quotes

I have so much in me, and the feeling for her absorbs it all; I have so much, and without her it all comes to nothing.

Is it not enough that we cannot make one another happy, must we also rob one another of the pleasures that any heart may permit itself now and then? And name me a person who in a bad mood will be decent enough to hide it, to bear it alone, without destroying the joy around him. Is it not rather an inner dissatisfaction with our own unworthiness, a dislike of ourselves that is always associated with envy aggravated by foolish conceit? We see people happy and not made happy by us, and that is unbearable.

Nothing should be treasured more highly than the value of the day.

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

But among all the discoveries and corrections probably none has resulted in a deeper influence on the human spirit than the doctrine of Copernicus…. Possibly mankind has never been demanded to do more, for considering all that went up in smoke as a result of realizing this change: a second Paradise, a world of innocence, poetry and piety: the witness of the senses, the conviction of a poetical and religious faith. No wonder his contemporaries did not wish to let all this go and offered every possible resistance to a doctrine which in its converts authorized and demanded a freedom of view and greatness of thought so far unknown indeed not even dreamed of.

Truth has to be repeated constantly, because Error also is being preached all the time, and not just by a few, but by the multitude. In the Press and Encyclopaedias, in Schools and Universities, everywhere Error holds sway, feeling happy and comfortable in the knowledge of having Majority on its side.

To think is easy. To act is hard. But the hardest thing in the world is to act in accordance with your thinking.

Ich bin der Geist der stets verneint!
Unde das mit Recht; denn alles was entsteht
ist werth daß es zu Grunde geht;
Drum besser wär's daß nichts entstünde.
So ist denn alles was ihr Sünde,
Zerstörung, kurz das Böse nennt,
Mein eigentliches Element.

One is never satisfied with a portrait of a person that one knows.

You often say to yourself in the course of your life that you ought to avoid having too much business, 'polypragmosyne' [incessant activity], and, more especially, that the older you get, the more you ought to avoid entering on new business. But it's all very well saying this, and giving yourself andothers good advice. The very fact of growing older means taking up a new business; all our circumstances change, and we must either stop doing anything at all or else willing and consciously take on the new role we have to play on life's stage.

We know accurately only when we know little; doubt grows with knowledge.

The more one knows, the more one comprehends, the more one realizes that everything turns in a circle.

Encourage the beautiful, the useful will take care of itself.

The sum which two married people owe to one another defies calculation. It is an infinite debt, which can only be discharged through all eternity.

Few people have the imagination for reality.