Quotes by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
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When God created us, he founded
His living nature for our home;
But you sit in this gloom, surrounded
By mildred skull and arid bone.

Nothing should be valued higher than the value of the day.

There is nothing in which people more betray their character than in what they find to laugh at.

Nothing is more dangerous than solitude.

General ideas and great conceit are always a fair way to bring about terrible misfortune.

We are all pilgrims who seek Italy.

All theory is gray, my friend. But forever green is the tree of life.

With knowledge grows doubt.

Give me the benefit of your convictions, if you have any; but keep your doubts to yourself, for I have enough of my own.

Only air and light and the love of friends! Let no man lose heart who still has these.

I could be living the best and happiest of lives if only I were not a fool.

It is in the half fools and the half wise that the greatest danger lies.

We rather confess our moral errors, faults, and crimes than our ignorance.

Great endowments often announce themselves in youth in the form of singularity and awkwardness.

The older I get the more I trust in the law according to which the rose and the lily bloom.

Our passions are true phoenixes; as the old burn out the new straight rise up from the ashes.

Our passions are the true phoenixes; when the old one is burnt out, a new one rises from its ashes.

We are shaped and fashioned by what we love.

The dangers of life are infinite, and among them is safety.

Unrest and uncertainty are our lot.

All our knowledge is symbolic.

There is no surer method of evading the world than by following Art, and no surer method of linking oneself to it than by Art.

If only these treasures were not so fragile as they are precious and beautiful.

Dispel not, the happy delusions of children.

Men are so constituted that every one undertakes what he sees another successful in, whether he has aptitude for it or not.

Our friends show us what we can do; our enemies teach us what we must do.

We can really respect a man only if he doesn't always look out for himself.

Talent develops in tranquility, character in the full current of human life.

Talent is nurtured in solitude; character is formed in the stormy billows of the world.

Self-love exaggerates our faults as well as our virtues.

We must always change, renew, rejuvenate ourselves; otherwise, we harden.

God made man simple, but how he changed and got complicated is hard to say.

Nothing is true, but that which is simple.

He who is plenteously provided for from within needs but little from without.

Take care of your body with steadfast fidelity.

Belief is not the beginning of knowledge -- it is the end.

Beauty is at once the ultimate principle and the highest aim of art.

Seldom in the business and transactions of ordinary life, do we find the sympathy we want.

Life is too short to drink bad wine.

Courage is the commitment to begin without any guarantee of success.

Instruction does much, but encouragement everything.

Everything is both simpler than we can imagine, and more complicated that we can conceive.

In the realm of ideas everything depends on enthusiasm… in the real world all rests on perseverance.

The hero draws inspiration from the virtue of his ancestors.

Treat people as if they were what they ought to be and you help them to become what they are capable of being.

When a man is old he must do more than when he was young.

Whatever liberates our spirit, without also giving us mastery over ourselves, is destructive.

We more readily confess to errors, mistakes and shortcomings in our conduct than in our thought.

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

Ignorant men raise questions that wise men answered a thousand years ago.

You can easily judge the character of a man by how he treats those who can do nothing for him.

To think is easy. To act is hard. But the hardest thing in the world is to act in accordance with your thinking.

A man sees in the world what he carries in his heart.

If you've never eaten while crying you don't know what life tastes like.

Dream no small dreams for they have no power to move the hearts.

Patriotism ruins history.

He who possesses art and science has religion; he who does not possess them, needs religion.

Everything in the world may be endured except continual prosperity.

The hardest thing to see is what is in front of your eyes.

The man who occupies the first place seldom plays the principal part.

The world remains ever the same.

Daring ideas are like chessmen moved forward; they may be beaten, but they may start a winning game.

Whoever wishes to keep a secret must hide the fact that he possesses one.

Who is the wisest man? He who neither knows or wishes for anything else than what happens.

We always have time enough, if we will but use it aright.

Nothing is to be rated higher than the value of the day.

Talent develops in quiet places, character in the full current of human life.

Self-knowledge comes from knowing other men.

A person places themselves on a level with the ones they praise.

The credit of advancing science has always been due to individuals and never to the age.

To hard necessity ones will and fancy must conform.

Superstition is the poetry of life.

Passions are vices or virtues to their highest powers.

Love can do much, but duty more.

We know accurately only when we know little, with knowledge doubt increases.

Unlike grown ups, children have little need to deceive themselves.

A creation of importance can only be produced when its author isolates himself, it is a child of solitude.

The Christian religion, though scattered and abroad will in the end gather itself together at the foot of the cross.

If you must tell me your opinions, tell me what you believe in. I have plenty of doubts of my own.

He is dead in this world who has no belief in another.

The formation of one's character ought to be everyone's chief aim.

Men show their character in nothing more clearly than what they think laughable.

All things are only transitory.

Let everyone sweep in front of his own door, and the whole world will be clean.

Life belongs to the living, and he who lives must be prepared for changes.

The right man is the one who seizes the moment.

First and last, what is demanded of genius is love of truth.

Nothing is more fearful than imagination without taste.

Devote each day to the object then in time and every evening will find something done.

One always has time enough, if one will apply it well.

Life is the childhood of our immortality.

I can tell you, honest friend, what to believe: believe life; it teaches better that book or orator.

A clever man commits no minor blunders.

That I be not as those are who spend the day in complaining of headache and the night in drinking the wine which gives the headache!

What is my life if I am no longer useful to others.

Wisdom is found only in truth.

The man with insight enough to admit his limitations comes nearest to perfection.

We can't form our children on our own concepts; we must take them and love them as God gives them to us.

The mediator of the inexpressible is the work of art.

Upon the creatures we have made, we are, ourselves, at last, dependent.