Best Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe Quotes

The right man is the one that seizes the moment.

The hero draws inspiration from the virtue of his ancestors.

The heights charm us, but the steps do not; with the mountain in our view we love to walk the plains.

The greatest genius will never be worth much if he pretends to draw exclusively from his own resources.

The greatest difficulties lie where we are not looking for them.

The greater the knowledge, the greater the doubt.

The formation of one's character ought to be everyone's chief aim.

The first and last thing required of genius is, love of the truth.

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.

The destiny of any nation at any given time depends on the opinion of its young people, those under twenty-five.

The deed is everything, the glory is naught.

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

The credit of advancing science has always been due to individuals and never to the age.

The Christian religion, though scattered and abroad will in the end gather itself together at the foot of the cross.

The biggest problem with every art is by the use of appearance to create a loftier reality.

The best government is that which teaches us to govern ourselves.

The best fortune that can fall to a man is that which corrects his defects and makes up for his failings.

The highest happiness of man is to have probed what is knowable and quietly to revere what is unknowable.

The highest problem of any art is to cause by appearance the illusion of a higher reality.

The really unhappy person is the one who leaves undone what they can do, and starts doing what they don't understand; no wonder they come to grief.

The phrases that men hear or repeat continually, end by becoming convictions and ossify the organs of intelligence.

The philosopher must station themselves in the middle.

The person who in shaky times also wavers only increases the evil, but the person of firm decision fashions the universe.

The person of analytic or critical intellect finds something ridiculous in everything. The person of synthetic or constructive intellect, in almost nothing.

The person born with a talent they are meant to use will find their greatest happiness in using it.

The people who are absent are the ideal; those who are present seem to be quite commonplace.

The people rate strength before everything.

The older we get the more we must limit ourselves if we wish to be active.

The most original of authors are not so because they advance what is new, but more because they know how to say something, as if it had never been said before.

The most happy man is he who knows how to bring into relation the end and beginning of his life.

The man who is born with a talent which he was meant to use finds his greatest happiness in using it.

The man of understanding finds everything laughable.

The little that is completed, vanishes from the sight of one who looks forward to what is still to do.

The intelligent man finds almost everything ridiculous, the sensible man hardly anything.

The human mind will not be confined to any limits.

That is the true season of love; when we believe that we alone can love, that no one could ever have loved as much before, and that no one will ever love in the same way again.

Taste is only to be educated by contemplation, not of the tolerably good but of the truly excellent. I therefore show you only the best works; and when you are grounded in these, you will have a standard for the rest, which you will know how to value, without overrating them.

Personality is everything in art and poetry.

People should talk less and draw more. Personally, I would like to renounce speech altogether and, like organic nature, communicate everything I have to say visually.

People of uncommon abilities generally fall into eccentricities when their sphere of life is not adequate to their abilities.

People may live as much retired from the world as they like, but sooner or later they find themselves debtor or creditor to some one.

People have a peculiar pleasure in making converts, that is, in causing others to enjoy what they enjoy, thus finding their own likeness represented and reflected back to them.

People do not mind their faults being spread out before them, but they become impatient if called on to give them up.

People are so constituted that everybody would rather undertake what they see others do, whether they have an aptitude for it or not.

Passions are vices or virtues to their highest powers.

Out of moderation a pure happiness springs.

Our work is the presentation of our capabilities.