Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Quotes
1749–1832 Germany
- Germany
- Academics
- Autobiographers
- Novelists
- Philosophers
Also known as: Goethe, Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von, J. W. von Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe, Von Goethe
Random Johann Wolfgang von Goethe quote
319 quotes
One lives but once in the world.
Just as, out of habit, one consults a run-down clock as though it were still going, so too one may look at the face of a beautiful woman as though she were still in love.
Maxims and Reflections (1833)
Hypotheses are scaffoldings erected in front of a building and then dismantled when the building is finished. They are indispensable for the workman; but you mustn't mistake the scaffolding for the building.
Maxims and Reflections (1833)
The true, prescriptive artist strives after artistic truth; the lawless artist, following blind instinct, after an appearance of naturalness. The one leads to the highest peaks of art, the other to its lowest depths.
Propylaea (1798)
Error is related to truth as sleeping is to waking. … When one has been in error, one turns to truth as though revitalized.
Though you're a whole world, Rome, still, without Love,
The world isn't the world, and Rome can't be Rome.
Roman Elegies (1789)
I wish the crowd to feel itself well treated,
Especially since it lives and lets me live.
He alone is great and happy who fills his own station of independence, and has neither to command nor to obey.
The fine emotions whence our lives we mold
Lie in the earthly tumult dumb and cold.
I feel as stupid, from all you've said
As if a mill-wheel whirled in my head.
My worthy friend, gray are all theories
And green alone Life's golden tree.
Yet through delivery orators succeed,
I feel that I am far behind indeed.
What one has wished for in youth, in old age one has in abundance.
Do you wish to roam farther and farther?
See the good that lies so near.
Just learn how to capture your luck,
for your luck is always there.
Who never ate his bread in sorrow,
Who never spent the darksome hours
Weeping, and watching for the morrow,—
He knows ye not, ye gloomy Powers.
Investigate what is, and not what pleases.
Yes! to this thought I hold with firm persistence;
The last result of wisdom stamps it true;
He only earns his freedom and existence
Who daily conquers them anew.
Wisdom is only found in truth.
It is the most foolish of all errors for young people of good intelligence to imagine that they will forfeit their originality if they acknowledge truth already acknowledged by others.
Maxims and Reflections (1833)
Oblivion is full of people who allow the opinions of others to overrule their belief in themselves.