Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Quotes

“Everyone believes in his youth that the world really began with him, and that all merely exists for his sake.”

“If I say to the moment: 'Stay now! You are so beautiful'!”

“Character calls forth character.”

“A vain man can never be altogether rude. Desirous as he is of pleasing, he fashions his manners after those of others.”

“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.”

“Talk well of the absent whenever you have the opportunity.”

“Few are open to conviction, but the majority of men are open to persuasion”

“It is not enough to have knowledge; one must apply it. It is not enough to have wishes; one must also accomplish it.”

“It is ever true that he who does nothing for others, does nothing for himself." ~ Goethe”

“In politics people throw themselves, as on a sickbed, from one side to the other in the belief they will lie more comfortably.”

“Properly speaking, such work is never finished; one must declare it so when, according to time and circumstances, one has done one's best.”

“An actor should take lessons from a painter and a sculptor.”

“If one has not read the newspapers for some months and then reads them all together, one sees, as one never saw before, how much time is wasted with this kind of literature.”

“Divide and rule, a sound motto. Unite and lead, a better one.”

“Our virtues and view spring from one root.”

“Properly speaking, we learn from those books only that we cannot judge. The author of a book that I am competent to criticise would have to learn from me.”

“Where there are no women there are no good manners”

“Everything transitory is but an image.”

“Death is Nature's expert advice to get plenty of Life.”

“Of all peoples the Greeks have dreamt the dream of life best.”

“For precisely when concepts fail one,Words are found at the right time.”

“Power is neither male nor female.”

“Whoso is content with pure experience and acts upon it has enough of truth.”

“We eagerly get hold of a law that serves as a weapon to our passions.”

“Some of our weaknesses are born in us, others are the result of education; it is a question which of the two gives us most trouble.”