Top 100 Johann Von Goethe Sayings
#1. 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
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#5. Nations could not return to their settled an independent life again without noticing that they had unconsciously adopted, and come to feel here and there previously unrecognized spiritual and intellectual needs.
Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
#6. He who wishes to exert a useful influence must be careful to insult nothing. Let him not be troubled by what seems absurd, but concentrate his energies to the creation of what is good. He must not demolish, but build. He must raise temples where mankind may come and partake of the purest pleasure.
Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
#7. We can offer up much in the large, but to make sacrifices in little things is what we are seldom equal to.
Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
#14. How can we know ourselves? Never by reflection, but only through action. Begin at once to do your duty and immediately you will know what is inside you.
Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
#16. Energy will do anything that can be done in the world; and no talents, no circumstances, no opportunities will make a two-legged animal a man without it.
Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
#18. Character - in things great and small - is indicated when a man (or person) pursues with sustained follow-through what he feels himself capable of doing.
Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
#19. Man can only endure a certain degree of unhappiness; what is beyond that either annihilates him or passes by him and leaves him apathetic
Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
#20. 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
#21. We first observe how dreary and disagreeable an overclouded day is when a single sunbeam pierces through, and offers to us the exhilarating splendor of a serene hour.
Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
#24. Do not give in too much to feelings. A overly sensitive heart is an unhappy possession on this shaky earth.
Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
#26. 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
#27. He who only tastes his error will long dwell with it, will take delight in it as in a singular felicity; while he who drains it to the dregs will, if he be not crazy, find it to be what it is.
Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
#28. The poet should seize the Particular, and he should, if there be anything sound in it, thus represent the Universal.
Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
#30. Each one of us must carry within the proof of immortality, it cannot be given from outside of us. To be sure, everything in natureis change but behind the change there is something eternal.
Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
#32. Assuredly there is no more lovely worship of God than that for which no image is required, but which springs up in our breast spontaneously when nature speaks to the soul, and the soul speaks to nature face to face.
Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
#38. This is what they all come to who exclusively harp on experience. They do not stop to consider that experience is only one half of experience.
Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
#42. My father, my father, and dost thou not hear
The words that the Erl-King now breathes in mine ear?
'Be calm, dearest child, 'tis thy fancy deceives;
Tis the sad wind that sighs through the withering leaves.
Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
#44. If the whole world I once could see On free soil stand, with the people free Then to the moment might I say, Linger awhile ... so fair thou art.
Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
#45. I consider him of no account who esteems himself just as the popular breath may chance to raise him.
Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
#46. We cannot and must not get rid of nor deny our characteristics. But we can give them shape and direction.
Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
#52. The greatest piece of folly is that every man thinks himself compelled to hand down what people think they have known.
Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
#54. 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!
Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
#55. There is no better deliverance from the world than through art, and a man can form no surer bond with it.
Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
#59. The mark of highest originality lies in the ability to develop a familiar idea so fruitfully that it would seem no one else would ever have discovered so much to be hidden in it.
Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
#61. There is no truer, warmer pleasure in this world than to behold a great soul opening up towards oneself.
Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
#63. The eye doesn't see any shapes, it sees only what is differentiated through light and dark or through colors.
Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
#65. 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
#70. Hypotheses are the scaffolds which are erected in front of a building and removedd when the building is completed. They are indispensable to the worker; but the worker must not mistake the scaffolding for the building.
Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
#71. The one who acts is always without conscience; nobody has a conscience but the contemplative person.
Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
#72. The light is there, and colors surround us. However, if there were no light nor colors in our own eye, we wouldn't perceive such things outside of us.
Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
#74. Without haste! without rest! Bind the motto to thy breast! Bear it with thee as a spell; Storm or sunshine , guard it well.
Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
#75. 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.
Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
#76. You're growling, poodle! Animal squealings 1230 Hardly suit the exalted feelings Filling my soul to overflowing. We're used to people ridiculing What they hardly understand, Grumbling at the good and the beautiful - It makes them so uncomfortable! Do dogs now emulate mankind?
Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
#78. Whatever we think out, whatever we take in hand to do, should be perfectly and finally finished, that the world, if it must alter, will only have to spoil it; we have then nothing to do but unite the severed, to recollect and restore the dismembered.
Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
#79. Alas! how much there is in education, and in our social institutions, to prepare us and our children for insanity.
Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
#80. Everything we do has a result. But that which is right and prudent does not always lead to good, nor the contrary to what is bad.
Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
#84. As soon as you are in a social setting, you better take away the key to the lock of your heart and pocket it; those who leave thekey in the lock are fools.
Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
#87. A man does not mind being blamed for his faults, and being punished for them, and he patiently suffers much for them; but he becomes impatient if he is required to give them up.
Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
#89. It is better for you to suffer an injustice than for the world to be without law. Therefore, let everyone submit to the law.
Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
#94. A flippant, frivolous man may ridicule others, may controvert them, scorn them; but he who has any respect for himself seems to have renounced the right of thinking meanly of others.
Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
#95. Oh, man is so transient that even where he is really certain of his existence, even where he makes the one true impression of his presence, in the memory, in the soul of his dear ones, even there must he disappear, be extinguished, and that so soon!
Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
#96. Superstition is a part of the very being of humanity; and when we fancy that we are banishing it altogether, it takes refuge in the strangest nooks and corners, and then suddenly comes forth again, as soon as it believes itself at all safe.
Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
#100. There are people who pay attention to the weaknesses of their friends; that is to no avail. I have always closely watched and profited from the strengths of my adversaries.
Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
