Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Quotes

Dear me! how long is art!
And short is our life!
I often know amid the scholar's strife
A sinking feeling in my mind and heart.
How difficult the means are to be found
By which the primal sources may be breached;
And long before the halfway point is reached,
They bury a poor devil in the ground.

Nothing is worth more than this day. You cannot relive yesterday. Tomorrow is still beyond your reach.

When she sees the leaves fall, they raise no other idea in her mind than that winter is approaching.

A person who does not know the history of the last 3,000 years wanders in the darkness of ignorance, unable to make sense of the reality around him

Love is an ideal thing, marriage a real thing.

The best slave is the one who thinks he is free.

I am amazed to see how deliberately I have entangled myself step by step. To have seen my position so clearly, and yet to have acted so like a child!

Where the light is brightest, the shadows are deepest.

When I say to the Moment flying;
'Linger a while — thou art so fair!'
Then bind me in thy bonds undying,
And my final ruin I will bear!

If I wasn't a devil myself I'd give
Me up to the Devil this very minute.

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

One must ask children and birds how cherries and strawberries taste.

I wish the stage were as narrow as the wire of a tighrope dancer so that no incompetent would dare step upon it.

No doubt you are right... there would be far less suffering amongst mankind if men... did not employ their imaginations so assiduously in recalling the memory of past sorrow, instead of bearing their present lot with equanimity.

Wer fremde Sprachen nicht kennt, weiß nichts von seiner eigenen.