Quotes by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

This is the highest wisdom that I own; freedom and life are earned by those alone who conquer them each day anew.
– Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Those who hope for no other life are dead even for this.
– Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Thought expands, but paralyzes; action animates, but narrows.
– Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Three may keep counsel, if two are away.
– Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
To appreciate the noble is a gain which can never be torn from us.
– Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
To create something you must be something.
– Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
To hard necessity ones will and fancy must conform.
– Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
To know someone here or there with whom you can feel there is understanding in spite of distances or thoughts expressed - that can make life a garden.
– Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
To rule is easy, to govern difficult.
– Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
To the person with a firm purpose all men and things are servants.
– Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
To witness two lovers is a spectacle for the gods.
– Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Traveling is like gambling: it is always connected with winning and losing, and generally where it is least expected we receive, more or less than what we hoped for.
– Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Unlike grown ups, children have little need to deceive themselves.
– Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Upon the creatures we have made, we are, ourselves, at last, dependent.
– Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
We always have time enough, if we will but use it aright.
– Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
We are forced to participate in the games of life before we can possibly learn how to use the options in the rules governing them.
– Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
We are never deceived; we deceive ourselves.
– Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
We are never further from what we wish than when we believe that we have what we wished for.
– Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
We can always redeem the man who aspires and strives.
– Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
We can't form our children on our own concepts; we must take them and love them as God gives them to us.
– Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
We cannot fashion our children after our desires, we must have them and love them as God has given them to us.
– Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
We do not have to visit a madhouse to find disordered minds; our planet is the mental institution of the universe.
– Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
We don't get to know people when they come to us; we must go to them to find out what they are like.
– Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
We know accurately only when we know little, with knowledge doubt increases.
– Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
We lay aside letters never to read them again, and at last we destroy them out of discretion, and so disappears the most beautiful, the most immediate breath of life, irrecoverable for ourselves and for others.
– Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
We will burn that bridge when we come to it.
– Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
What by a straight path cannot be reached by crooked ways is never won.
– Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
What chance gathers she easily scatters. A great person attracts great people and knows how to hold them together.
– Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
What I possess I would gladly retain. Change amuses the mind, yet scarcely profits.
– Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
What is important in life is life, and not the result of life.
– Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
What is my life if I am no longer useful to others.
– Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
What life half gives a man, posterity gives entirely.
– Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Whatever liberates our spirit without giving us self-control is disastrous.
– Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it.
– Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Whatever you cannot understand, you cannot possess.
– Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
When ideas fail, words come in very handy.
– Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Whether a person shows themselves to be a genius in science or in writing a song, the only point is, whether the thought, the discovery, or the deed, is living and can live on.
– Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Who is the most sensible person? The one who finds what is to their own advantage in all that happens to them.
– Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Who is the wisest man? He who neither knows or wishes for anything else than what happens.
– Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Whoever wishes to keep a secret must hide the fact that he possesses one.
– Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Whoever, in middle age, attempts to realize the wishes and hopes of his early youth, invariably deceives himself. Each ten years of a man's life has its own fortunes, its own hopes, its own desires.
– Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Wisdom is found only in truth.
– Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Wood burns because it has the proper stuff in it; and a man becomes famous because he has the proper stuff in him.
– Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
There is nothing more frightening than active ignorance.
– Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
There is nothing more frightful than ignorance in action.
– Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
We are shaped and fashioned by what [whom] we love.
– Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Mathematics has the completely false reputation of yielding infallible conclusions. Its infallibility is nothing but identity. Two times two is not four, but it is just two times two, and that is what we call four for short. But four is nothing new at all. And thus it goes on and on in its conclusions, except that in the higher formulas the identity fades out of sight.
– Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
A man can stand anything except a succession of ordinary days.
– Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Beware of dissipating your powers; strive constantly to concentrate them. Genius thinks it can do whatever it sees others doing, but is sure to repent of every ill-judged outlay.
– Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Enjoy when you can, and endure when you must.
– Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Everything in the world may be endured except continued prosperity.
– Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
If any man wish to write in a clear style, let him be first clear in his thoughts; and if any would write in a noble style, let him first possess a noble soul.
– Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Men show their characters in nothing more clearly than in what they think laughable.
– Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
One ought, every day at least, to hear a little song, read a good poem, see a fine picture, and if it were possible, to speak a few reasonable words.
– Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
That is the true season of love, when we believe that we alone can love, that no one could ever have loved so before us, and that no one will love in the same way after us.
– Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
There is nothing worse than aggressive stupidity.
– Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
To be pleased with one's limits is a wretched state.
– Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
So divinely is the world organized that every one of us, in our place and time, is in balance with everything else.
– Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Where is the man who has the strength to be true, and to show himself as he is?
– Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
What is uttered from the heart alone, Will win the hearts of others to your own.
– Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Piety is not a goal but a means to attain through the purest peace of mind the highest culture.
– Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Only by joy and sorrow does a person know anything about themselves and their destiny. They learn what to do and what to avoid.
– Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
One cannot develop taste from what is of average quality but only from the very best.
– Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Music is either sacred or secular. The sacred agrees with its dignity, and here has its greatest effect on life, an effect that remains the same through all ages and epochs. Secular music should be cheerful throughout.
– Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
It is after all the greatest art to limit and isolate oneself.
– Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
In nature we never see anything isolated, but everything in connection with something else which is before it, beside it, under it and over it.
– Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
If I love you, what business is it of yours?
– Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
I love those who yearn for the impossible.
– Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
He who possesses art and science has religion he who does not possess them, needs religion.
– Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Great thoughts and a pure heart, that is what we should ask from God.
– Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Go to foreign countries and you will get to know the good things one possesses at home.
– Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Error is acceptable as long as we are young but one must not drag it along into old age.
– Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Doubt grows with knowledge.
– Johann Wolfgang von Goethe