Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Quotes

“What is not started today is never finished tomorrow.”

“Whether one show one's self a man of genius in science or compose a song, the only point is, whether the thought, the discovery, the deed, is living and can live on.”

“A person hears only what they understand.”

“Duty is the demand of the hour.”

“He who cannot draw on three thousand years is living from hand to mouth.”

“What is not fully understood is not possessed.”

“When you take a man as he is, you make him worse. When you take a man as he can be, you make him better.”

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

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

“Poor fool! in whose petty estimation all things are little.”

“The greatest joy of a thinking man is to have searched the explored and to quietly revere the unexplored.”

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

“The ideal of beauty is simplicity and tranquility.”

“A joy shared is a joy doubled.”

“Every decided colour does a certain violence to the eye, and forces the organ to opposition.”

“The style of an author is a faithful copy of his mind.”

“Man would not be the finest creature in the world if he were not too fine for it.”

“Every great idea exerts, on first appearing, a tyrannical influence: Hence, the advantages it brings are turned all too soon into disadvantages.”

“Yes, I have finally arrived to this Capital of the World! I now see all the dreams of my youth coming to life... Only in Rome is it possible to understand Rome.”

“With little art, clear wit and sense Suggest their own delivery.”

“I call architecture frozen music.”

“Life is too short to drink bad wine.”

“Neither a work of nature nor one of art we get to know when they have been finished; we must surprise them in the process of beingcreated so as to understand them to some degree.”

“He is happiest, be he king or peasant, who finds peace in his home.”

“I do not speak of what I cannot praise.”