Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Quotes - Page 52

• Colors are light's suffering and joy

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Light, Color, Joy

  4 Copy quote

• There is no permanence in doubt; it incites the mind to closer inquiry and experiment, from which, if rightly managed, certainty proceeds, and in this alone can man find thorough satisfaction.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Science, Men, Doubt

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Johann Peter Eckermann (2014). “Conversations of Goethe with Johann Peter Eckermann”, p.236, Ravenio Books

  4 Copy quote

• The philosophers must station themselves in the middle.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Philosopher, Middle, Stations

  4 Copy quote

• After fifteen minutes nobody looks at a rainbow.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Rainbow, Fifteen, Looks

  8 Copy quote

• The finished man, you know, is difficult to please; a growing mind will ever show you gratitude. --Faust 1, lines 182-3

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Gratitude, Men, Mind

  10 Copy quote

• Several classical sayings that one likes to repeat had quite a different meaning from the ones later times attributed to them.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Different, Likes, Repeats

  7 Copy quote

• How marvelous, wide and broad is my Inheritance! Time is my property, my estate is time.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Time, Inheritance, Broads

  7 Copy quote

• When an idea is wanting, a word can always be found to take its place.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Ignorance, Ideas, Found

  7 Copy quote

• Mannerism is always longing to have done, and has no true enjoyment in work. A genuine, really great talent, on the other hand, has its greatest happiness in execution.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Hands, Style, Execution

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Johann Peter Eckermann (2014). “Conversations of Goethe with Johann Peter Eckermann”, p.87, Ravenio Books

  9 Copy quote

• The smallest hair throws its shadow.
  [Ger., Das kleinste Harr wirft seinen Schatten.]

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Hair, Shadow, Trifles

  7 Copy quote

• Woman is mistress of the art of completely imbittering the life of the person on whom she depends.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Art, Women, Mistress

  10 Copy quote

• Is it not enough that we cannot make one another happy, must we also rob one another of the pleasures that any heart may permit itself now and then? And name me a person who in a bad mood will be decent enough to hide it, to bear it alone, without destroying the joy around him. Is it not rather an inner dissatisfaction with our own unworthiness, a dislike of ourselves that is always associated with envy aggravated by foolish conceit? We see people happy and not made happy by us, and that is unbearable.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Heart, Names, People

  8 Copy quote

• The decline in literature indicates a decline in the nation. The two keep pace in their downward tendency.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Creativity, Two, Pace

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1853). “Goethe's Opinions on the World, Mankind, Literature, Science, and Art”, p.109

  9 Copy quote

• The history of mankind is his character.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Character, History, Historical

  7 Copy quote

• Men are so inclined to content themselves with what is commonest; the spirit and the senses so easily grow dead to the impressions of the beautiful and perfect, that every one should study, by all methods, to nourish in his mind the faculty of feeling these things. ...For this reason, one ought every day at least, to hear a little song, read a good poem, see a fine picture, and, if it were possible, to speak a few reasonable words.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Beautiful, Song, Men

  Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre bk. 5, ch. 1 (1795 - 1796)

  7 Copy quote

• Character calls forth character.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Character

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (2015). “Maxims and Reflections”, p.56, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  7 Copy quote

• After all, poets shouldn't be their own interpreters and shouldn't carefully dissect their poems into everyday prose; that would mean the end of being poets. Poets send their creations into the world, it is up to the reader, the aesthetician, and the critic to determine what they wanted to say with their creations.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Mean, Poetry, Everyday

  7 Copy quote

• The suffering may be moral or physical; and in my opinion it is just as absurd to call a man a coward who destroys himself, as to call a man a coward who dies of a malignant fever.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Men, Suffering, Coward

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (2015). “The Sorrows of Young Werther: Top Classic of German”, p.23, 谷月社

  4 Copy quote

• What right those who govern have to govern they don't question, they just govern. Whether the people have a right to depose them that doesn't concern them. All they are concerned with is that the people will not be tempted to depose them.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  People, Revolution, Concern

  7 Copy quote

• I have heard myself accused of being an opponent, an enemy of mathematics, which no one can value more highly than I, for it accomplishes the very thing whose achievement has been denied me.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Achievement, Enemy, Opponents

  7 Copy quote

• Nothing is true, but that which is simple.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Simple, Simplicity

  12 Copy quote

• Thought expands, but paralyzes; action animates, but narrows.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Thinking, Action

  4 Copy quote

• Piety is not an end, but a means: a means of attaining the highest culture by the purest tranquility of soul. Hence it may be observed that those who set up piety as an end and object are mostly hypocrites.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Hypocrite, Mean, Soul

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (2013). “Delphi Works of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (Illustrated)”, p.3516, Delphi Classics

  4 Copy quote

• The present is a powerful deity.
  [Ger., Die Gegenwart ist eine machtige Gottin.]

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Powerful, Today, Deities

  4 Copy quote

• The eternal feminine doth draw us upward.
  [Ger., Das Ewig-Weibliche zieht uns hinan.]

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Women, Feminine, Draws

  7 Copy quote

You May Also Like:

Friedrich Schiller

Heinrich Heine

Friedrich Nietzsche

Lord Byron

William Shakespeare

Gotthold Ephraim Lessing

Johann Gottfried Herder

Immanuel Kant