Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Quotes

One mind is enough for a thousand hands.

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

Mathematicians are like Frenchmen: whatever you say to them they translate into their own language and forthwith it is something entirely different.

When I consider the narrow limits within which our active and inquiring faculties are confined; when I see how all our energies are wasted in providing for mere necessities, which again have no further end than to prolong a wretched existence; and then that all our satisfaction concerning certain subjects of investigation ends in nothing better than a passive resignation... when I consider all this... I am silent.

A man's shortcomings are taken from his epoch; his virtues and greatness belong to himself.

We look back on our life as a thing of broken pieces, because our mistakes and failures are always the first to strike us, and outweigh in our imagination what we have accomplished and attained.

People of uncommon abilities generally fall into eccentricities when their sphere of life is not adequate to their abilities.

Keep not standing fixed and rooted. Briskly venture, briskly roam.

"schade dass die Natur nur einen Mensch aus dir schuf / denn zum wurdigen Mann war und zum Schelmen der Stoff"
(loose translation: nature, alas, made only one being out of you although there was material for a good man & a rogue)

Ich bin der Geist der stets verneint! Und das mit Recht; denn alles, was entsteht, ist wert, dass es zugrunde geht.

Whatever you think you can do or believe you can do, begin it. Action has magic, grace and power in it.

Every author in some way portrays himself in his works, even if it be against his will.

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.

Everyone is deceived in his hopes, cheated in his expectations.

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