Top 100 Goethe's Quotes
#1. Whoever could properly characterize Goethe's Meister would have actually expressed what is the timely trend in literature. He would be able, as far as literary criticism is concerned, to rest.
Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel
#2. I was keen to stage 'Faust,' although I find Goethe's 'Faust' indigestible.
Simon McBurney
#3. Dostoevsky, like Goethe's Prometheus, creates not voiceless slaves (as does Zeus), but free people, capable of standing alongside their creator, capable of not agreeing with him and even of rebelling against him. A
Mikhail Bakhtin
#4. Time may restore us in his course Goethe's sage mind and Byron's force: But where will Europe's latter hour Again find Wordsworth's healing power?
Matthew Arnold
#5. For the commission to do a great building, I would have sold my soul like Faust. Now I had found my Mephistopheles. He seemed no less engaging than Goethe's.
Albert Speer
#6. The actor's realm is that of the fleeting. Of all kinds of fame, it is known, his is the most ephemeral. At least, this is said in conversation. But all kinds of fame are ephemeral. From the point of view of Sirius, Goethe's works in ten thousand years will be dust and his name forgotten.
Albert Camus
#7. I have learned a deep respect for one of Goethe's couplets: "Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it. Begin it now!"
W. H. Murray
#8. Real freedom cannot exist alongside false freedom, but the abandonment of false freedom looks as if it would leave you as good as dead. But this is the secret of Goethe's Stirb und werde, "Die and come to life." For the job of compassion in a sick society only the dead need apply.
Alan W. Watts
#9. Goethe's devil is a cultivated personage and acquainted with the modern sciences; sneers at witchcraft and the black art even while employing them, and doubts most things, nay, half disbelieves even his own existence.
Thomas Carlyle
#10. Few developments central to the history of art have been so misrepresented or misunderstood as the brief, brave, glorious, doomed life of the Bauhaus - the epochally influential German art, architecture, crafts, and design school that was founded in Goethe's sleepy hometown of Weimar in 1919.
Martin Filler
#11. The practical revolutionary will understand Goethe's 'conscience is the virtue of observers and not of agents of action'; in action, one does not always enjoy the luxury of a decision that is consistent both with one's individual conscience and the good of mankind.
Saul Alinsky
#12. Get in first and shape the terms. He did so in quick short sentences, his smooth tenor's voice as clear and precise as it was when he sang Goethe's tragic poem.
Ian McEwan
#13. Goethe's thinking was not rigid with inflexible contours; it was a thinking in which the concepts continually metamorphose.
Rudolf Steiner
#14. By the artist's seizing any one object from nature, that object no longer is part of nature. One can go so far as to say that theartist creates the object in that very moment by emphasizing its significant, characteristic, and interesting aspects or, rather, by adding the higher values.
Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
#15. Ask Jeeves! Who ever used that thing? College freshmen to find out who Goethe was - that's it.
Walter Kirn
#17. Schiller writes in a letter [to Goethe, 17 December 1795] of a 'poetic mood'. I think I know what he means, I think I am familiar with it myself. It is the mood of receptivity to nature and one in which one's thoughts seem as vivid as nature itself.
Ludwig Wittgenstein
#21. When we treat people merely as they are, they will remain as they are. When we treat them as if they were what they should be, they will become what they should be.
Thomas S. Monson
#22. But people need to cling to something," Oshima says. "They have to. You're doing the same, even though you don't realize it. It's like Goethe said: Everything's a metaphor.
Haruki Murakami
#23. As all Nature's thousands changes But one changeless God proclaim; So in Art's wide kingdom ranges One sole meaning still the same: This is Truth, eternal Reason, Which from Beauty takes its dress, And serene through time and season Stands aye in loveliness.
Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
#24. I often think of the different ways Goethe and Darwin got at evolution. Goethe had the poetic conception of it all right; Darwin worked it out step by step. Who's ahead? And which has any business scoffing at the other?
Susan Glaspell
#25. Read this book ... but understand it's fiction. And let life be ... your most important addiction.
John Zelazny
#27. MARGARETE. Yes, out of sight is out of mind. It's second nature with you, gallantry; But you have friends of every kind, Cleverer by far, oh much, than me. FAUST. Dear girl, believe me, what's called cleverness Is mostly shallowness and vanity.
Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
#29. No, no! The devil is an egotist,
And is not apt, without why or wherefore,
"For God's sake," others to assist.
[Ger., Nein, nein! Der Teufel ist ein Egoist
Und thut nicht leicht um Gottes Willen,
Was einem Andern nutzlich ist.]
Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
#32. True love is love that stays constant for ever, whatever it's fortune; whether requited or scored, filled or sent empty away.
Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
#38. Hast thou, then, nothing more to mention? Com'st ever, thus, with ill intention? Find'st nothing right on earth, eternally? MEPHISTOPHELES No, Lord! I find things, there, still bad as they can be. Man's misery even to pity moves my nature; I've scarce the heart to plague the wretched creature.
Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
#39. Did it really have to be like this?that the source of Man's contentment becomes the source of his misery?
Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
#44. Superstition is the poetry of life. It is inherent in man's nature; and when we think it is wholly eradicated, it takes refuge in the strangest holes and corners, whence it peeps out all at once, as soon as it can do it with safety.
Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
#47. No limit, no definition, may restrict the range or depth of the human spirit's passage into its own secrets or the world's.
Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
#48. [Nature's] crown is Love. Only through Love can we come near her. She puts gulfs between all things, and all things strive to be interfused. She isolates everything, that she may draw everything together. With a few draughts from the cup of Love she repays for a life full of trouble.
Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
#49. Yes - this I hold to with devout insistence,
Wisdom's last verdict goes to say:
He only earns both freedom and existence
Who must reconquer them each day.
Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
#50. MEPHISTO. Good fortune's closely linked to merit, A thought that never enters foolish minds; The Philosopher's Stone's there in their hands? The Philosopher's searching everywhere for it.
Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
#51. Oh, I envy you!" he cried. "You are still nourished by yesterday's alms, but yesterday's happiness no longer nourishes me.
Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
#52. Faith is like private capital, stored in one's own house. It is like a public savings bank or loan office, from which individuals receive assistance in their days of need; but here the creditor quietly takes his interest for himself.
Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
#54. Someone criticized an elderly man for wooing young women. He replied that that was the only way to rejuvenation, which was, afterall, everybody's wish.
Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
#59. Here too it's masquerade, I find:
As everywhere, the dance of mind.
I grasped a lovely masked procession,
And caught things from a horror show ...
I'd gladly settle for a false impression,
If it would last a little longer, though.
Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
#60. Let many things unfold before their eyes, Let the crowd stare and be amazed, for then You'll win their hearts, and that's to win the prize;
Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
#61. For many people, one of the most frustrating aspects of life is not being able to understand other people's behavior.
Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
#62. The shudder of awe is humanity's highest faculty, even though this world is forever altering values.
Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
#63. Whom I once get hold of, he will Find the whole world pointless, futile. 11810 Over him gloom casts its dun net, Blinding him to sunrise, sunset, Though possessing all his senses, Inwardly there's only darkness,
Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
#65. One must repeat one's confession of faith from time to time, actually state what one condones, what one condemns; for the opposing camp isn't silent either.
Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
#66. How to please the public - that's the test,
But nowadays I find I'm in a fix;
I know they're not accustomed to the best,
But they've all read so much they know the tricks.
How can we give then something fresh and new
That's serious, but entertaining too?
Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
#67. Only that type of story deserves to be called moral that shows us that one has the power within oneself to act, out of the conviction that there is something better, even against one's own inclination.
Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
#68. I like being old, even if the names I hear are more and more unfamiliar. Maybe, to paraphrase Goethe who said that, "Youth is wasted on the young," we should add that "Age can be wasted on the aged," unless one's capacity to wonder increases.
Wolf Kahn
#69. If thou wouldst hear what seemly is and fit, inquire of noble woman; they can tell, who in life's common usage hold their place by graceful deed and aptly chosen word.
Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
#71. Men grieve [Mephistopheles] so with the days of their lamenting, [he] even hate[s] to plague them with [his] torments.
Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
#72. However, come, let's go, the world's turned gray And chilly, evening mists are rising, At nightfall it's indoors you want to be. 1170 But why should you stand still, astonished, staring? What can you see in the dusk to find upsetting?
Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
#74. I myself must also say I believe it is true that in the end humanitarianism will triumph; only I fear that at the same time the world will be one big hospital and each person will be the other person's humane keeper.
Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
#75. Now you've seen a hero," he said. "And that's worth something." - Eckermann, CONVERSATIONS WITH GOETHE
Arturo Perez-Reverte
#76. We gladly put antiquity above our age but not posterity. Only a father doesn't begrudge his son's talent.
Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
#77. Let it go out, the sun's fire, If light dawns inside our souls, In our own hearts we'll discover What the outer world withholds.
Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
#80. Whether the Koran is of eternity
I don't ask about that
That it is the book of books
I believe it to be so as muslim's duty.
Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
#81. If I'm to listen to someone else's opinion, it must be put in a positive way; I have enough problematic speculations in my own head
Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
#82. I didn't ask for this role, but I'll play it. Now go do your best. Be bold, and mighty forces will come to your aid. Goethe said that. It's not too late for you to become a person of substance, Russell. Please get my son home safely. You know, I'm glad we spoke.
Elaine Miller
#83. Where Pan protects them. In the cool, wet places Of bushy clefts, nature's nymphs live hidden, 9880 The crowding trees reach upwards with their branches Longingly, after a higher region.
Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
#84. We must not hope to be mowers, And to gather the ripe gold ears, Unless we have first been sowers And water the furrows with tears. It is not just as we take it, This mystical world of ours, Life's field will yield as we make it A harvest of thorns or of flowers.
Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
#85. The realization of the self is only possible if one is productive, if one can give birth to one's own potentialities.
Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
#86. The only means to gain one's ends with people are force and cunning. Love also, they say; but that is to wait for sunshine, and life needs every moment. JOHANN VON GOETHE, 1749-1832
Robert Greene
#88. When toward the Devil's Hose we tread,
Woman's a thousand steps behind.
[Ger., Denn geht es zu des Bosen Haus
Das Weib hat tausend Schritt voraus.]
Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
#89. We know that a man can read Goethe or Rilke in the evening, that he can play Bach and Schubert, and go to his day's work at Auschwitz in the morning.
George Steiner
#90. For true art there is no such thing as preparatory schooling, but there are certainly preparations; the best, however, is when the least pupil takes a share in master's work. Colour-grinders have turned into very good artists.
Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
#92. It's true that nothing in this world makes us so necessary to others as the affection we have for them.
Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
#93. By Fortune's adverse buffets overborne
To solitude I fled, to wilds forlorn,
And not in utter loneliness to live,
Myself at last did to the Devil give!
Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
#94. 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.
Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
#97. Each one's no longer conscious
Of the high wall, or the rest:
Since the one enduring fortress,
Is the soldier's iron breast.
If you'd live unconquered,
Quickly arm, and fight the real foe:
Every wife an Amazon bred,
And every child a hero.
Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
#98. If one mistreats citizens of foreign countries, one infringes upon one's duty toward one's own subjects; for thus one exposes themto the law of retribution.
Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
