Quotes from Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

But who will dare to speak the truth out clear? The few who anything of truth have learned, And foolishly did not keep truth concealed, Their thoughts and visions to the common herd revealed, Since time began we've crucified and burned

I nothing had, and yet enough for youth--Joy in Illusion, ardent thirst for Truth. Give unrestrained, the old emotion, The bliss that touched the verge of pain, The strength of Hate, Love's deep devotion,--O, give me back my youth again!

A dim vastness is spread before our souls; the perceptions of our mind are as obscure as those of our vision... But alas! when we have attained our object, when the distant 'there' becomes the present 'here,' all is changed; we are as poor and circumscribed as ever, and our souls still languish for unattainable happiness.

That which issues from the heart alone, Will bend the hearts of others to your own.

Since you know me and my destiny only too well, you probably also know what attracts me to all unfortunate people.

When she sees the leaves fall, they raise no other idea in her mind than that winter is approaching.

I am amazed to see how deliberately I have entangled myself step by step. To have seen my position so clearly, and yet to have acted so like a child!

Love is an ideal thing, marriage a real thing.

Dear me! how long is art! And short is our life! I often know amid the scholar's strife A sinking feeling in my mind and heart. How difficult the means are to be found By which the primal sources may be breached; And long before the halfway point is reached, They bury a poor devil in the ground.

Think of you! I do not think of you; you are always before my soul.

No doubt you are right... there would be far less suffering amongst mankind if men... did not employ their imaginations so assiduously in recalling the memory of past sorrow, instead of bearing their present lot with equanimity.

Wer fremde Sprachen nicht kennt, weiß nichts von seiner eigenen.

Nothing is worth more than this day. You cannot relive yesterday. Tomorrow is still beyond your reach.

Where the light is brightest, the shadows are deepest.

When I consider the narrow limits within which our active and inquiring faculties are confined; when I see how all our energies are wasted in providing for mere necessities, which again have no further end than to prolong a wretched existence; and then that all our satisfaction concerning certain subjects of investigation ends in nothing better than a passive resignation... when I consider all this... I am silent.

One must ask children and birds how cherries and strawberries taste.

The way you see people is the way you treat them, and the way you treat them is what they become.

When I say to the Moment flying; 'Linger a while -- thou art so fair!' Then bind me in thy bonds undying, And my final ruin I will bear!

One mind is enough for a thousand hands.

I was oppressed with the sensations I then felt; I sunk under the weight of them.

What we agree with leaves us inactive, but contradiction makes us productive.

We look back on our life as a thing of broken pieces, because our mistakes and failures are always the first to strike us, and outweigh in our imagination what we have accomplished and attained.

I wish the stage were as narrow as the wire of a tighrope dancer so that no incompetent would dare step upon it.

Ich bin der Geist der stets verneint! Und das mit Recht; denn alles, was entsteht, ist wert, dass es zugrunde geht.