319 quotes
Neither art thou the man to catch the fiend and hold him!
Behavior is a mirror in which every one shows his image.
The sum which two married people owe to one another defies calculation. It is an infinite debt, which can only be discharged through all eternity.
Elective Affinities (1809)
Love and desire are the spirit's wings to great deeds.
I sing as the bird sings
That lives in the boughs.
Wilhelm Meister's Lehrjahre (Apprenticeship) (1786)
He who is firm in will molds the world to himself.
If I love you, what business is that of yours?
A wounded heart can with difficulty be cured.
What we do not understand we do not possess.
Sprüche in Prosa. Quote reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922)
Piety is not an end but a means to attain by the greatest peace of mind the highest degree of culture.
Maxims and Reflections (1833)
I know a little of navigation:
War, trade, and piracy, allow,
As three in one, no separation.
Faust, Part 2 (1832)
Every situation, every moment — is of infinite worth; for it is the representative of a whole eternity.
Conversations of Goethe with Eckermann and Soret (1850)
When you see some evil you proceed to immediate action, you make an immediate attack to cure the symptom.
Maxims and Reflections (1833)
In limitations he first shows himself the master,
And the law can only bring us freedom.
Was Wir Bringen (1802)
Treat people as if they were what they ought to be and you help them to become what they are capable of being.
Behaviour is a mirror in which everyone shows his image.
Maxims and Reflections (1833)
I consider him of no account who esteems himself just as the popular breath may chance to raise him.
Thou must (in commanding and winning, or serving and losing, suffering or triumphing) be either anvil or hammer.
A good man, through obscurest aspirations
Has still an instinct of the one true way.
A mind, once formed, is never suited after,
One yet in growth will ever grateful be.