Whenever I hear people talking about liberal ideas, I am always astounded that men should love to fool themselves with empty sounds. An idea should never be liberal; it must be vigorous, positive, and without loose ends so that it may fulfill its divine mission and be productive.
Pain and pleasure, good and evil, come to us from unexpected sources. It is not there where we have gathered up our brightest hopes, that the dawn of happiness breaks. It is not there where we have glanced our eye with affright, that we find the deadliest gloom. What should this teach us? To bow to the great and only Source of light, and live humbly and with confiding resignation.
Death is Nature's expert advice to get plenty of Life.
He who does not see the whole world in his friends, does not deserve that the world should hear of him.
It is equally a mistake to hold one's self too high, or to rate one's self too cheap.
Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back, always ineffectiveness. Concerning all acts of initiation - creation - there is one elementary truth, the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans.
No two people see the world exactly alike, and different temperaments will often apply the same principle, recognized by both, differently. Even one and the same person won't always maintain the same views and judgments: earlier convictions must give way to later ones.
Wanted: A dog that neither barks nor bites, eats broken glass and shits diamonds.
The man who acts never has any conscience; no one has any conscience but the man who thinks
Legislators and revolutionaries who promise both equality and liberty are visionaries and charlatans.
Thinking is easy, acting is difficult, and to put one's thoughts into action is the most difficult thing in the world.
Solitude is fine when you are at peace with yourself and have something definite to do.
Correction does much, but encouragement does more. Encouragement after censure is as the sun after a shower.
Beauty is everywhere a welcome guest.
The older I get the more I trust in the law according to which the rose and the lily bloom.
Of the book of books most wondrous is the tender book of love.
Clever people are always the best conversations lexicon.
To know someone here or there with whom you can feel there is understanding in spite of distances or thoughts expressed That can make life a garden.
Experiments are mediators between nature and idea.
What am I then...? Everything that I have seen, heard, and observed I have collected and exploited. My works have been nourished by countless different individuals, by innocent and wise ones, people of intelligence and dunces. Childhood, maturity and old age all have brought me their thoughts....their perspectives on life. I have often reaped what others have sowed. My work is the work of a collective being that bears the name Goethe.
We often feel that we lack something, and seem to see that very quality in someone else, promptly attributing all our own qualities to him too, and a kind of ideal contentment as well. And so the happy mortal is a model of complete perfection--which we have ourselves created.
A great scholar is seldom a great philosopher.
Mathematicians are like Frenchmen: whatever you say to them they translate into their own language and forthwith it is something entirely different.
Let us not dream that reason can ever be popular. Passions, emotions, may be made popular; but reason remains ever the property of an elect few.
Know'st thou yesterday, its aim and reason? Work'st thou will today for worthier things? Then calmly wait the morrow's hidden season, And fear thou not, what hap soe'er it brings
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