Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Quotes

Divide and rule, a sound motto. Unite and lead, a better one.

Law is mighty, mightier necessity.

I have come to the frightening conclusion that I am the decisive element. It is my personal approach that creates the climate. It is my daily mood that makes the weather. I possess tremendous power to make life miserable or joyous. I can be a tool of torture or an instrument of inspiration, I can humiliate or humor, hurt or heal. In all situations, it is my response that decides whether a crisis is escalated or de-escalated, and a person is humanized or de-humanized. If we treat people as they are, we make them worse. If we treat people as they ought to be, we help them become what they are capable of becoming.

Nicht vor Irrthum zu bewahren, ist die Pflicht des Menschen erziehers; sondern den Irrenden zu leiten, ja ihn seinen Irrthum aus vollen Bechern ausschlürfen zu lassen, das ist Weisheit der Lehrer. Wer seinen Irrthum nur kostet, hält lange damit Haus; er freuet sich dessen als eines seltenen Glücks; aber wer ihn ganz erschöpft, der muß ihn kennenlernen.

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.

We usually lost today because there has been a yesterday, and tomorrow is coming.

One of the most striking signs of the decay of art is the intermixing of different genres.

Talent develops in solitude, character develops in the stream of life.

Grau, theurer Freund, ist alle Theorie,<br

I hold to faith in the divine love — which, so many years ago for a brief moment in a little corner of the earth, walked about as a man bearing the name of Jesus Christ — as the foundation on which alone my happiness rests.

Wo viel Licht ist, ist starker Schatten.

Blut ist ein ganz besondrer Saft.

Beloved, don't fret that you gave yourself so quickly!
Believe me, I don't think badly or wrongly of you.
The arrows of Love are various: some scratch us,
And our hearts suffer for years from their slow poison.
But others strong-feathered with freshly sharpened points
Pierce to the marrow, and quickly inflame the blood.
In the heroic ages, when gods and goddesses loved,
Desire followed a look, and joy followed desire.

Willst du immer weiterschweifen? Sieh, das Gute liegt so nah.
Lerne nur das Glück ergreifen,
denn das Glück ist immer da.

Nothing is so strong as gentleness, nothing so gentle as real strength.