319 quotes
A mathematician is only perfect insofar as he is a perfect man, sensitive to the beauty of truth.
Maxims and Reflections (1833)
None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free.
Elective Affinities (1809)
I had rather be Mercury, the smallest among seven [planets], revolving round the sun, than the first among five [moons] revolving round Saturn.
Of freedom and of life he only is deserving
Who every day must conquer them anew.
Faust, Part 2 (1832)
Properly speaking, such work is never finished; one must declare it so when, according to time and circumstances, one has done one's best.
One always has time enough, if one will apply it well.
The deed is everything, the glory nothing.
Faust, Part 2 (1832)
Nothing should be treasured more highly than the value of the day.
Maxims and Reflections (1833)
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.
Wilhelm Meister's Lehrjahre (Apprenticeship) (1786)
The society of women is the foundation of good manners.
Die Wahlverwandtschaften (1809)
For the nature of women is closely allied to art.
A noble man is led far by woman's gentle words.
Iphigenia auf Tauris (1786)
The deed is everything, the glory naught.
Only mankind
Can do the impossible:
He can distinguish,
He chooses and judges,
He can give permanence
To the moment.
There is no outward mark of politeness that does not have a profound moral reason. The right education would be that which taught the outward mark and the moral reason together.
Elective Affinities (1809)
The man of action is always unprincipled; none but the contemplative has a conscience.
A man who works at another’s will, not for his own passion or his own need, but for money or honor, is always a fool.
Talent develops in tranquility, character in the full current of human life.
A thinking man's greatest happiness is to have fathomed what can be fathomed and to revere in silence what cannot be fathomed.
Maxims and Reflections (1833)
One is never satisfied with a portrait of a person that one knows.
Elective Affinities (1809)