Quotes by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
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If you have science and art,
You also have religion;
But if you don't have them,
You better have religion.

Correction does much, but encouragement does more. Encouragement after censure is as the sun after a shower.

Art is long, life is short; judgement difficult, opportunity transient.

We must be young to do great things.

Rest not. Life is sweeping by; go and dare before you die. Something mighty and sublime, leave behind to conquer time.

As long as you don't practice it, this dying and becoming, You are only a dreary guest on this dark earth.

The happy do not believe in miracles.

It is one of Heaven's best gifts to hold such a dear creature in one's arms.

Lord Byron is only great as a poet; as soon as he reflects he is a child.

Once you have missed the first buttonhole, you'll never manage to button up.

Nothing tells more about the character of a man than the things he makes fun of.

A well-bred carriage is difficult to imitate; for in strictness it is negative, and it implies a long-continued previous training.

Enthusiasm is of the greatest value, so long as we are not carried away by it.

Happy the man who early learns the wide chasm that lies between his wishes and his powers.

Good children's literature appeals not only to the child in the adult, but to the adult in the child.

Prudent and active men, who know their strength and use it with limit and circumspection, alone go far in the affairs of the world.

Several classical sayings that one likes to repeat had quite a different meaning from the ones later times attributed to them.

What dazzles, for the moment spends its spirit; Whats genuine, shall posterity inherit.

The present is a powerful deity.

Time is a strange thing. It is a whimsical tyrant, which in every century has a different face for all that one says and does.

Men's wretchedness in soothe I so deplore, Not even I would plague the sorry creatures more.

That which issues from the heart alone,
Will bend the hearts of others to your own.

One who has passed the thirtieth year
already is as good as dead --
it would be best to kill you off by then.

Just take a look at our patrons, and you'll know
Some don't appreciate us, others never will.

Faust: Who holds the devil, let him hold him well, He hardly will be caught a second time.

What have the Germans gained by their boasted freedom of the press, except the liberty of abusing each other as they like?

The history of knowledge is a great fugue in which the voices of the nations one after the other emerge.

The follies of the wise man are known to himself, but hidden from the world.

The day is committed to error and floundering; success and achievement are matters of long range.

Make the most of time, it flies away so fast; yet method will teach you to win time.

Desire is the presentiment of our inner abilities, and the forerunner of our ultimate accomplishments.

A man is really alive only when he delights in the good-will of others.

When one is polite in German, one lies.

Our wishes are presentiments of the abilities that lie in us, harbingers of what we will be able to accomplish.

It is only in misery that we recognize the hand of God leading good men to good.

To like things like, whatever one may ail; There is certain help.

True works of art are a manifestation of the higher laws of nature.

Great passions are incurable diseases.

What you can do, or think you can, begin it.

Who longs in solitude to live, Ah! soon his wish will gain: Men hope and love, men get and give, and leave him to his pain.

The history of science is science itself; the history of the individual, the individual.

Two souls, alas, are housed within my breast,
And each will wrestle for the mastery there.

A person is never happy till their vague strivings has itself marked out its proper limitations.

Money lost, something lost. Honor lost, much lost. Courage lost, everything lost-better you were never born.

If you wish to advance into the infinite, explore the finite in all directions.

To be pleased with one's limits is a wretched state.

Merely to breathe freely does not mean to live.

Life teaches us to be less harsh with ourselves and with others.

He who knows no foreign languages knows nothing of his own.

The important thing in life is to have a great aim, and the determination to attain it.

Let your trouble be Light will follow dark Though the heaven falls You may hear the lark.

People can only live with their equals, and not even with them; for in the long run they cannot tolerate that someone is their equal.

The art of living rightly is like all arts; it must be learned and practiced with incessant care.

Viewed from the summit of reason, all life looks like a malignant disease and the world like a madhouse.

Children, love one another, and if that is not possible-at least try to put up with one another.

Since you know me and my destiny only too well, you probably also know what attracts me to all unfortunate people.

All theory, my friend, is grey, But green is life's glad golden tree.

A noble man is led far by woman's gentle words.

To live as one likes is plebian the noble man aspires to order and law.

The mob has nothing to lose, everything to gain.

It is delivery that makes the orators success.

Too many parents make life hard for their children by trying, too zealously, to make it easy for them.

Wishes are premonitions of abilities.

We amuse ourselves painting our prison-walls with bright figures and brilliant landscapes.

When two people are really happy about one another one can generally assume they are mistaken.

Out of moderation a pure happiness springs.

Reasonable men are the best dictionaries of conversation.

A reasonable man needs only to practice moderation to find happiness.

Certain flaws are necessary for the whole. It would seem strange if old friends lacked certain quirks.

The arts are the salt of the earth; as salt relates to food, the arts relate to technology.

Once I blazed across the sky,
Leaving trails of flame;
I fell to earth, and here I lie
Who'll help me up again?
-A Shooting Star.

The day is of infinite length for him who knows how to appreciate and use it.

What people call the spirit of the times is mostly their own spirit in which the times mirror themselves.

All sects seem to me to be right in what they assert, and wrong in what they deny.

The world is so full of simpletons and madmen, that one need not seek them in a madhouse.

The connoisseur of art must be able to appreciate what is simply beautiful, but the common run of people is satisfied with ornament.

How often do I lull my seething blood to rest, for you have never seen anything so unsteady, so uncertain, as this heart.

One is never satisfied with the portrait of a person that one knows.

For a strolling damsel a doubtful reputation bears.

Humor is one of the elements of genius -- admirable as an adjunct; but as soon as it becomes dominant, only a surrogate for genius.

To think is easy. To act is difficult. To act as one thinks is the most difficult.

I bid the chords sweet music make, And all must follow in my wake.

Plunge boldly into the thick of life!

Two souls, alas, are housed within my breast, and each will wrestle for the mastery there.

Two souls dwell, alas! in my breast.

Chess is the touchstone of intellect.

Just trust yourself and you'll learn the art of living.

Everything is just how I imagined it, yet everything is new.

It is not easy in this world for one person to understand the next one.

Stones are mute teachers; they silence the observer, and the most valuable lesson we learn from them we cannot communicate.

Look closely at those who patronize you. Half are unfeeling, half untaught.

Well-mannered children could be conceived if the parents were well-mannered.

What matters in art is not thinking but making.

Culture which smooth the whole world licks, Also unto the devil sticks.

So, lively brisk old fellow, don't let age get you down. White hairs or not, you can still be a lover.

To make a young couple love each other, it is only necessary to oppose and separate them.

Writing history is a method of getting rid of the past.

The effects of good music are not just because it's new; on the contrary music strikes us more the more familiar we are with it.

Science arose from poetry... when times change the two can meet again on a higher level as friends.

Names are but noise and smoke, Obscuring heavenly light.