Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Quotes

“If we are out of synch with ourselves, everything is out of synch for us.”

“When I consider the narrow limits within which our active and inquiring faculties are confined; when I see how all our energies are wasted in providing for mere necessities, which again have no further end than to prolong a wretched existence; and then that all our satisfaction concerning certain subjects of investigation ends in nothing better than a passive resignation... when I consider all this... I am silent.”

“If everyone sweeps before his own front door, then the street is clean.”

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

“Why go further and further,Look, happiness is right here.Learn how to grab hold of luck,For luck is always there.”

“National literature does not mean much these days; now is the age of world literature, and every one must contribute to hasten thearrival of that age.”

“Sing it not in mournful numbers.”

“The web of this world is woven of Necessity and Chance. Woe to him who has accustomed himself from his youth up to find something necessary in what is capricious, and who would ascribe something like reason to Chance and make a religion of surrendering to it.”

“Letters are among the most significant memorial a person can leave behind them.”

“How to please the public - that's the test, But nowadays I find I'm in a fix; I know they're not accustomed to the best, But they've all read so much they know the tricks. How can we give then something fresh and new That's serious, but entertaining too?”

“Truth must be repeated again and again, because error is constantly being preached round about.”

“What a day it is when we must envy the men in their graves.”

“The angles evenDraw strength from gazing on its glance,Though none its meaning fathom may;The world's unwither'd countenanceIs bright as at creation's day.”

“Out of moderation a pure happiness springs.”

“Oh, happy he who still hopes he can emerge from Error's boundless sea! - Faust.”

“I have never looked at foreign countries or gone there but with the purpose of getting to know the general human qualities that are spread all over the earth in very different forms, and then to find these qualities again in my own country and to recognize and to further them.”

“To rule is easy, to govern difficult.”

“Architecture is crystallized music.”

“True art can only spring from the intimate linking of the serious and the playful.”

“A really great talent finds its happiness in execution.”

“The Woman-Soul leadeth us upward and on!”

“All that is alive tends toward color, individuality, specificity, effectiveness and opacity. All that is done with life inclines toward knowledge, abstraction, generality transfiguration and transparency.”

“Few people have the imagination for reality.”

“Care is taken that trees do not grow into the sky.”

“It is only necessary to grow old to become more charitable and even indulgent. I see no fault committed by others that I have not committed myself.”