Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832) was a German poet, playwright, novelist, scientist, statesman, theatre director, and critic.
Here is a collection of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe most famous quotes: Goethe Quotes about love, marriage, life, dream, truth, magic, nature, action, music and beauty. Quotes and Sayings on business, love, Happiness, freedom, knowledge, ignorance, bigotry, education, encouragement, change, ideas, art, work, poetry and self-improvement by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.
Goethe Quotes and Sayings
If you treat an individual as he is, he will remain how he is. But if you treat him as if he were what he ought to be and could be, he will become what he ought to be and could be.
Let everyone sweep in front of his own door, and the whole world will be clean.
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.
He is happiest, be he king or peasant, who finds peace in his home.
Daring ideas are like chessmen moved forward. They may be beaten, but they may start a winning game.
Ignorant men raise questions that wise men answered a thousand years ago.
A man should hear a little music, read a little poetry, and see a fine picture every day of his life, in order that worldly cares may not obliterate the sense of the beautiful which God has implanted in the human soul.
Nothing is more terrible than to see ignorance in action.
I have possessed that heart, that noble soul, in whose presence I seemed to be more than I really was, because I was all that I could be.
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.
As soon as you trust yourself, you will know how to live.
Plunge boldly into the thick of life, and seize it where you will, it is always interesting.
If I love you, what business is it of yours?
The hardest thing to see is what is in front of your eyes.
Things which matter most must never be at the mercy of things which matter least.
Being brilliant is no great feat if you respect nothing.
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.
In the realm of ideas everything depends on enthusiasm.... in the real world all rests on perseverance.
The world is so empty if one thinks only of mountains, rivers and cities; but to know someone who thinks and feels with us, and who, though distant, is close to us in spirit, this makes the earth for us an inhabited garden.
The coward only threatens when he is safe.
Magic is believing in yourself, if you can do that, you can make anything happen.
Beauty is everywhere a welcome guest.
Knowing is not enough, we must apply. Willing is not enough, we must do.
Happiness is a ball after which we run wherever it rolls, and we push it with our feet when it stops.
We do not have to visit a madhouse to find disordered minds; our planet is the mental institution of the universe.
Only by joy and sorrow does a person know anything about themselves and their destiny. They learn what to do and what to avoid.
A man sees in the world what he carries in his heart.
All intelligent thoughts have already been thought; what is necessary is only to try to think them again.
There is nothing more frightful than ignorance in action.
It is in self-limitation that a master first shows himself.
You can easily judge the character of a man by how he treats those who can do nothing for him.
Nature knows no pause in progress and development, and attaches her curse on all inaction.
If you've never eaten while crying you don t know what life tastes like.
Live dangerously and you live right.
The human race is a monotonous affair. Most people spend the greatest part of their time working in order to live, and what little freedom remains so fills them with fear that they seek out any and every means to be rid of it.
Character is formed in the stormy billows of the world.
To think is easy. To act is hard. But the hardest thing in the world is to act in accordance with your thinking.
There is nothing insignificant in the world. It all depends on the point of view.
Nothing shows a man's character more than what he laughs at.
Thinking is easy, acting is difficult, and to put one's thoughts into action is the most difficult thing in the world.
Know thyself? If I knew myself, I'd run away.
Many people take no care of their money till they come nearly to the end of it, and others do just the same with their time.
A person hears only what they understand.
Life is the childhood of our immortality.
None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free.
If God had wanted me otherwise, He would have created me otherwise.
By seeking and blundering we learn.
All theory, dear friend, is gray, but the golden tree of life springs ever green.
There is nothing worse than aggressive stupidity.
Personality is everything in art and poetry.
Life belongs to the living, and he who lives must be prepared for changes.
We always have time enough, if we will but use it aright.
Instruction does much, but encouragement everything.
The best government is that which teaches us to govern ourselves.
All the knowledge I possess everyone else can acquire, but my heart is all my own.
No one would talk much in society if they knew how often they misunderstood others.
I love those who yearn for the impossible.
It is not doing the thing we like to do, but liking the thing we have to do, that makes life blessed.
Nothing is worth more than this day.
One can be instructed in society, one is inspired only in solitude.
Enjoy when you can, and endure when you must.
If you wish to know the mind of a man, listen to his words.
Everything is hard before it is easy.
Divide and rule, the politician cries; unite and lead, is watchword of the wise.
The person born with a talent they are meant to use will find their greatest happiness in using it.
Love and desire are the spirit's wings to great deeds.
I am proud of my heart alone, it is the sole source of everything, all our strength, happiness and misery. All the knowledge I possess everyone else can acquire, but my heart is all my own.
The unnatural, that too is natural.
Nothing is so strong as gentleness, nothing so gentle as real strength.
Mysteries are not necessarily miracles.
The greatest thing in this world is not so much where we stand as in what direction we are moving.
Doubt grows with knowledge.
Who are you then? I am part of that power which eternally wills evil and eternally works good.
Every step of life shows much caution is required.
Music is liquid architecture; Architecture is frozen music.
Letters are among the most significant memorial a person can leave behind them.
We are shaped and fashioned by what we love.
Destiny grants us our wishes, but in its own way, in order to give us something beyond our wishes.
We must always change, renew, rejuvenate ourselves; otherwise, we harden.
The human mind will not be confined to any limits.
There is strong shadow where there is much light.
We don't get to know people when they come to us; we must go to them to find out what they are like.
Those who know nothing of foreign languages know nothing of their own.
Great thoughts and a pure heart, that is what we should ask from God.
At the moment of commitment the entire universe conspires to assist you.
Which government is the best? The one that teaches us to govern ourselves.
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.
There is nothing in the world more shameful than establishing one's self on lies and fables.
We are our own devils; we drive ourselves out of our Edens.
Wisdom is found only in truth.
Love is an ideal thing, marriage a real thing; a confusion of the real with the ideal never goes unpunished.
The artist alone sees spirits. But after he has told of their appearing to him, everybody sees them.
This is the true measure 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 ever love in the same way after us.
A noble person attracts noble people, and knows how to hold on to them.
The soul that sees beauty may sometimes walk alone.
The mediator of the inexpressible is the work of art.
Age does not make us childish, as some say; it finds us true children.
First and last, what is demanded of genius is love of truth.
Divide and rule, a sound motto; Unite and lead, a better one.
I think that I am better than the people who are trying to reform me.
Sometimes I don't understand how another can love her, is allowed to love her, since I love her so completely myself, so intensely, so fully, grasp nothing, know nothing, have nothing but her!
The person born with a talent they are meant to use will find their greatest happiness in using it.
All truly wise thoughts have been thought already thousands of times; but to make them truly ours, we must think them over again honestly, until they take root in our personal experience.
One always has time enough, if one will apply it well.
People who think honestly and deeply have a hostile attitude towards the public.
I call architecture frozen music.
Talent develops in solitude, character develops in the stream of life.
Thinking is more interesting than knowing, but less interesting than looking.
It's true that nothing in this world makes us so necessary to others as the affection we have for them.
Every reader, if he has a strong mind, reads himself into the book, and amalgamates his thoughts with those of the author.
Fresh activity is the only means of overcoming adversity.
Every day I observe more and more the folly of judging of others by ourselves; and I have so much trouble with myself, and my own heart is in such constant agitation, that I am well content to let others pursue their own course, if they only allow me the same privilege.
What I possess, seems far away to me, and what is gone becomes reality.
All things are only transitory.
Difficulties increase the nearer we get to the goal.
We know accurately only when we know little; doubt grows with knowledge.
Whoever wishes to keep a secret must hide the fact that he possesses one.
One can stand anything except a succession of ordinary days.
Two souls, alas, are housed within my breast, And each will wrestle for the mastery there.
This is the highest wisdom that I own; freedom and life are earned by those alone who conquer them each day anew.
Leap and the net will appear.
We are never deceived; we deceive ourselves.
Death is a commingling of eternity with time; in the death of a good man, eternity is seen looking through time.
If you don't feel it, you'll never get it.
Be above it! Make the world serve your purpose, but do not serve it!
It is after all the greatest art to limit and isolate oneself.
Treat people as if they were what they ought to be and you help them to become what they are capable of being.
All theory is gray, my friend. But forever green is the tree of life.
We will burn that bridge when we come to it.
Remember to live.
Misunderstandings and neglect occasion more mischief in the world than malice and wickedness.
Character develops itself in the stream of life.
I treat my heart like a sick child and gratify its every fancy.
Few people have the imagination for reality.
On all the peaks lies peace.
I am not omniscient, but I know a lot.
Too many parents make life hard for their children by trying, too zealously, to make it easy for them.
He only earns his freedom and his life Who takes them every day by storm.
The suffering may be moral or physical; and in my opinion it is just as absurd to call a man a coward who destroys himself, as to call a man a coward who dies of a malignant fever.
The highest goal that man can achieve is amazement.
It is the strange fate of man, that even in the greatest of evils the fear of the worst continues to haunt him.
He is happiest, be he king or peasant, who finds peace in his home.
To be loved for what one is, that is the greatest exception. The great majority love in others only what they lend him; their own selves, their version of him.
Girls we love for what they are; young men for what they promise to be.
Is this the destiny of man? Is he only happy before he has acquired his reason or after he has lost it?
What you get by achieving your goals is not as important as what you become by achieving your goals.
He who enjoys doing and enjoys what he has done is happy.
In happy ignorance, I sighed for a world I did not know, where I hoped to find every pleasure and enjoyment which my heart could desire; and now, on my return from that wide world.... how many disappointed hopes and unsuccessful plans have I brought back!
It is not doing the thing we like to do, but liking the thing we have to do, that makes life blessed.
Sowing is not as difficult as reaping.
Doubt can only be removed by action.
Love does not dominate; it cultivates.
Self-knowledge comes from knowing other men.
We all of us live upon the past, and through the past we are destroyed.
The intelligent man finds everything laughable, the sensible man hardly anything.
The man with insight enough to admit his limitations comes nearest to perfection.
One never goes so far as when one doesn't know where one is going.
If you would create something, you must be something.
The right man is the one who seizes the moment.
There is no past we can bring back by longing for it. There is only an eternal now that builds and creates out of the past something new and better.
Dream no small dreams for they have no power to move the hearts of men.
Piety is not a goal but a means to attain through the purest peace of mind the highest culture.
The greatest evil that can befall man is that he should come to think ill of himself.
There is nothing more dreadful than imagination without taste.
Hatred is active, and envy passive dislike; there is but one step from envy to hate.
I laugh at my heart, and do its will.
Choose well. Your choice is brief, and yet endless.
The most happy man is he who knows how to bring into relation the end and beginning of his life.
The heights charm us, but the steps do not; with the mountain in our view we love to walk the plains.
How often do I lull my seething blood to rest, for you have never seen anything so unsteady, so uncertain, as this heart.
Who is the happiest of men? He who values the merits of others, and in their pleasure takes joy, even as though 'twere his own.'
Every situation - nay, every moment - is of infinite worth; for it is the representative of a whole eternity.
What is uttered from the heart alone will win the heart of others to your own.
I examine my own being, and find there a world, but a world rather of imagination and dim desires, than of distinctness and living power. Then everything swims before my senses, and I smile and dream while pursuing my way through the world.
For a man to achieve all that is demanded of him, he must regard himself as greater than he is.
Everybody wants to be somebody, but nobody wants to grow.
if only these treasures were not so fragile as they are precious and beautiful.
What is the destiny of man, but to fill up the measure of his sufferings, and to drink his allotted cup of bitterness?
All that is transitory is but a metaphor.
He who moves not forward, goes backward.
Night is the other half of life, and the better half.
Do not hurry; do not rest.
A mans manners are a mirror in which he shows his portrait.
The rich want good wine, the poor, plenty of wine.
It is ever true that he who does nothing for others, does nothing for himself.
Certain flaws are necessary for the whole. It would seem strange if old friends lacked certain quirks.
What a torment it is to see so much loveliness passing and repassing before us, and yet not dare to lay hold of it!
There are two things children should get from their parents: roots and wings.
He who cannot draw on three thousand years is living from hand to mouth.
Nothing is more dangerous than solitude.
We often feel that we lack something, and seem to see that very quality in someone else, promptly attributing all our own qualities to him too, and a kind of ideal contentment as well. And so the happy mortal is a model of complete perfection - which we have ourselves created.
Nothing can be compared to the new life that the discovery of another country provides for a thoughtful person. Although I am still the same I believe to have changed to the bones.
Man is not born to solve the problem of the universe, but to find out what he has to do; and to restrain himself within the limits of his comprehension.
Oblivion is full of people who allow the opinions of others to overrule their belief in themselves.
We usually lost today because there has been a yesterday, and tomorrow is coming.
The deed is everything; the fame is nothing.
Waste not a day in vain digression; with resolute, courageous trust seek every possible impression and make it firmly your posession you'll then work on because you must.
Do not give in too much to feelings. A overly sensitive heart is an unhappy possession on this shaky earth.
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.
Everything transitory is but an image.
I nothing had, and yet enough for youth - Joy in Illusion, ardent thirst for Truth. Give unrestrained, the old emotion, The bliss that touched the verge of pain, The strength of Hate, Love's deep devotion, - O, give me back my youth again!
A word spoken is a terrible thing when it suddenly utters what the heart has long allowed.
Love is an ideal thing, marriage a real thing.
Since you know me and my destiny only too well, you probably also know what attracts me to all unfortunate people.
That which issues from the heart alone, Will bend the hearts of others to your own.
Let mental culture go on advancing, let the natural sciences progress in even greater extent and depth, and the human mind widen itself as much as it desires: beyond the elevation and moral culture of Christianity, as it shines forth in the Gospels, it will not go.
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!
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.
Think of you! I do not think of you; you are always before my soul.
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.
The limits of my language are the limits of my universe.
The way you see people is the way you treat them, and the way you treat them is what they become.
To be pleased with one's limits is a wretched state.
In the colorful reflection we have what is life.
A really great talent finds its happiness in execution.
Behaviour is a mirror in which every one displays his own image.
To live within limits. To want one thing. Or a few things very much and love them dearly. Cling to them, survey them from every angle. Become one with them - that is what makes the poet, the artist, the human being.
What is not started today is never finished tomorrow.
If I accept you as you are, I will make you worse; however, if I treat you as though you are what you are capable of becoming, I help you become that.
When she sees the leaves fall, they raise no other idea in her mind than that winter is approaching.
No one has ever properly understood me, I have never fully understood anyone; and no one understands anyone else.
Nothing is worth more than this day. You cannot relive yesterday. Tomorrow is still beyond your reach.
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.
What we agree with leaves us inactive, but contradiction makes us productive.
One must ask children and birds how cherries and strawberries taste.
There are but two roads that lead to an important goal and to the doing of great things: strength and perseverance. Strength is the lot of but a few priveledged men; but austere perseverance, harsh and continuous, may be employed by the smallest of us and rarely fails of its purpose, for its silent power grows irresistibly greater with time.
A man's shortcomings are taken from his epoch; his virtues and greatness belong to himself.
Keep not standing fixed and rooted. Briskly venture, briskly roam.
from desire I rush to satisfaction; from satisfaction I leap to desire.
I wish the stage were as narrow as the wire of a tighrope dancer so that no incompetent would dare step upon it.
The greater part of all the mischief in the world arises from the fact that men do not sufficiently understand their own aims.
When scholars study a thing, they strive to kill it first, if it's alive; then they have the parts and they've lost the whole, for the link that's missing was the living soul.
Tell me with whom you consort and I will tell you who you are; if I know how you spend your time, then I know what might become of you.
The best slave is the one who thinks he is free.
We amuse ourselves painting our prison-walls with bright figures and brilliant landscapes.
Whatever you think you can do or believe you can do, begin it. Action has magic, grace and power in it.
There is nothing in which people more betray their character than in what they find to laugh at.
I wait for the morning of my tears.
Mathematicians are like Frenchmen: whatever you say to them they translate into their own language and forthwith it is something entirely different.
One mind is enough for a thousand hands.
People of uncommon abilities generally fall into eccentricities when their sphere of life is not adequate to their abilities.
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.
I was oppressed with the sensations I then felt; I sunk under the weight of them.
Beauty is a manifestation of secret natural laws, which otherwise would have been hidden from us forever.
It is in vain that a man of sound mind and cool temper understands the condition of such a wretched being.... He can no more communicate his own wisdom to him than a healthy man can instil his strength into the invalid by whose bedside he is seated.
Everyone is deceived in his hopes, cheated in his expectations.
Every author in some way portrays himself in his works, even if it be against his will.
He values my understanding and talents more highly than my heart, but I am proud of the latter only. It is the sole source of everything of our strength, happiness, and misery. All the knowledge I possess every one else can acquire, but my heart is exclusively my own.
They should be ashamed of themselves, all these sober people!
The decline of literature indicates the decline of a nation.
How many kings are governed by their ministers, how many ministers by their secretaries? Who, in such cases, is really the chief?
A clever man commits no minor blunders.
A unused life is an early death.
On top of the world, or in the depths of despair.
Classicism is health, romanticism is sickness.
A creation of importance can only be produced when its author isolates himself; it is a child of solitude.
Nothing is more disgusting than the majority: because it consists of a few powerful predecessors, of rogues who adapt themselves, of weak who assimilate themselves, and the masses who imitate without knowing at all what they want.
While Man's desires and aspirations stir, He cannot choose but err.
Talent develops in tranquility, character in the full current of human life.
The more one knows, the more one comprehends, the more one realizes that everything turns in a circle.
Love grants in a moment what toil can hardly achieve in an age.
I hate everything that merely instructs me without augmenting or directly invigorating my activity
The affairs of the world are no more than so much trickery, and a man who toils for money or honour or whatever else in deference to the wishes of others, rather than because his own desire or needs lead him to do so, will always be a fool.
Please send me your last pair of shoes, worn out with dancing as you mentioned in your letter, so that I might have something to press against my heart.
You must be either the servant or the master, the hammer or the anvil.
An angel! Nonsense! Everybody so describes his mistress; and yet I find it impossible to tell you how perfect she is, or why she is so perfect: suffice it to say she has captivated all my senses.
The really unhappy person is the one who leaves undone what they can do, and starts doing what they don't understand; no wonder they come to grief.
Let's plunge ourselves into the roar of time, the whirl of accident; may pain and pleasure, success and failure, shift as they will - it's only action that can make a man.
Just trust yourself and you'll learn the art of living.
Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it.
Nothing is worse than active ignorance.
Whatever you cannot understand, you cannot possess.
Tolerance should really only be a passing attitude: it should lead to appreciation. To tolerate is to offend.
Science and art belong to the whole world, and before them vanish the barriers of nationality.
What is important in life is life, and not the result of life.
Kindness is the golden chain by which society is bound.
Cease endlessly striving for what you would like to do and learn to love what must be done.
The best is the deep quiet in which I live and grow against the world, and harvest what they cannot take from me by fire or sword.
For many people, one of the most frustrating aspects of life is not being able to understand other people's behavior.
I can promise to be sincere, but I cannot promise to be impartial.
Words are mere sound and smoke, dimming the heavenly light.
What matters creative endless toil, When, at a snatch, oblivion ends the coil?
Man is made by his belief. As he believes, so he is.
When ideas fail, words come in very handy.
If I love you, is that any of your business?
I am fully convinced that the soul is indestructible, and its activity will continue through eternity.
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 as us.
National hatred is something peculiar. You will always find it strongest and most violent where there is the lowest degree of culture.
It is better to do the smallest thing in the world than to hold half an hour to be too small a thing.
Just begin and the mind grows heated; continue, and the task will be completed!
Deeply earnest and thoughtful people stand on shaky footing with the public.
If one has not read the newspapers for some months and then reads them all together, one sees, as one never saw before, how much time is wasted with this kind of literature.