Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

“There is no crime of which I do not deem myself capable.”

“I call architecture frozen music.”

“In this world one is seldom reduced to make a selection between two alternatives. There are as many varieties of conduct and opinion as there are turns of feature between an aquiline nose and a flat one.”

“What is the destiny of man, but to fill up the measure of his sufferings, and to drink his allotted cup of bitterness?”

“El que por complacer a los demás, contra su gusto y sin necesidad, se fatiga corriendo tras la fortuna, los honores u otra cosa cualquiera, es siempre un loco.”

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

“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.”

“Men show their characters in nothing more clearly than in what they think laughable. ”

“We all of us live upon the past, and through the past we are destroyed.”

“Was ich weiß, kann jeder wissen. Mein Herz hab' ich allein.”

“„Bin weder Fräulein, weder schön,kann ungeleitet nach Hause gehn.”

“Ohne Hast, aber ohne Rast. - Without haste, but without rest.”

“Doubt can only be removed by action.”

“Do not hurry; do not rest.”

“Nothing higher can be accomplished by the epic poet thus interpreting his own time in order to serve the future.(Foreword by Frederick Ungar in Elective Affinities, 1962, Ungar Publishing)”

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

“Doubt grows with knowledge.”

“The Beginning and end of all literary activity is the reproduction of the world that surrounds me by means of the world that is in me, all things being grasped, related, recreated, molded, and reconstructed in a personal form and original manner.”

“Is this the destiny of man? Is he only happy before he has acquired his reason or after he has lost it?”

“What a torment it is to see so much loveliness passing and repassing before us, and yet not dare to lay hold of it!”

“In happy ignorance, I sighed for a world I did not know, where I hoped to find every pleasure and enjoyment which my heart could desire; and now, on my return from that wide world... how many disappointed hopes and unsuccessful plans have I brought back!”

“How many kings are governed by their ministers, how many ministers by their secretaries? Who, in such cases, is really the chief?”

“Weary of liberty, he suffered himself to be saddled and bridled, and was ridden to death for his pains.”

“It is in vain that a man of sound mind and cool temper understands the condition of such a wretched being... He can no more communicate his own wisdom to him than a healthy man can instil his strength into the invalid by whose bedside he is seated.”

“The suffering may be moral or physical; and in my opinion it is just as absurd to call a man a coward who destroys himself, as to call a man a coward who dies of a malignant fever.”

“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!”

“Would you require a wretched being, whose life is slowly wasting under a lingering disease, to despatch himself at once by the stroke of a dagger? Does not the very disorder which consumes his strength deprive him of the courage to effect his deliverance?”

“The world runs on from one folly to another; and the man who, solely from regard to the opinion of others, and without any wish or necessity of his own, toils after gold, honour, or any other phantom, is no better than a fool.”

“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.”

“My days are as happy as those reserved by God for his elect; and whatever be my fate hereafter, I can never say that I have not tasted joy— the purest joy of life.”

“When any distress or terror surprises us in the midst of our amusements, it naturally makes a deeper impression than at other times, either because the contrast makes us more keenly susceptible, or rather perhaps because our senses are then more open to impressions, and the shock is consequently stronger.”

“And I like those authors best whose scenes describe my own situation in life-- and the friends who are about me whose stories touch me with interest, from resembling my own homely existence.”

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

“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.”

“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.”

“Be above it! Make the world serve your purpose, but do not serve it!”

“A mans manners are a mirror in which he shows his portrait.”

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

“Every author in some way portrays himself in his works, even if it be against his will.”

“Each one's no longer consciousOf the high wall, or the rest:Since the one enduring fortress,Is the soldier's iron breast.If you’d live unconquered,Quickly arm, and fight the real foe:Every wife an Amazon bred,And every child a hero.”

“Here too it’s masquerade, I find: As everywhere, the dance of mind.I grasped a lovely masked procession,And caught things from a horror show…I’d gladly settle for a false impression,If it would last a little longer, though.”

“You can’t, if you can’t feel it, if it neverRises from the soul, and swaysThe heart of every single hearer,With deepest power, in simple ways.You’ll sit forever, gluing things together,Cooking up a stew from other’s scraps,Blowing on a miserable fire,Made from your heap of dying ash.Let apes and children praise your art,If their admiration’s to your taste,But you’ll never speak from heart to heart,Unless it rises up from your heart’s space.”

“The world only goes forward because of those who oppose it.”

“All is like, all unlike; all is useful and harmful, eloquent and dumb, reasonable and unreasonable. And what people profess about individual matters is often contradictory.”

“The Godhead is effective in the living and not in the dead, in the becoming and the changing, not in the become and the set-fast; and therefore, similarly, the reason is concerned only to strive towards the divine through the becoming and the living, and the understanding only to make use of the become and the set-fast.”

“Laisse le grand monde aller son train sonore, nous autres nicherons ici en silence.”

“I am part of the part that once was everything,Part of the darkness which gave birth to light…Mephistopheles, from Faust.”

“Wenn das liebe Tal um mich dampft und die hohe Sonne an der Oberfläche der undurchdringlichen Finsternis meines Waldes ruht und nur einzelne Strahlen sich in das innere Heiligtum stehlen, ich dann im hohen Grase am fallenden Bache liege und näher an der Erde tausend mannigfaltige Gräschen mir merkwürdig werden;...Es ist wunderbar: wie ich hierher kam und vom Hügel in das schöne Tal schaute, wie es mich ringsumher anzog - Dort das Wäldchen! - Ach könntest du dich in seine Schatten mischen! - Dort die Spitze des Berges! - Ach könntest du von da die weite Gegend überschauen! - Die ineinandergeketteten Hügel und vertraulichen Täler! - O könnte ich mich in ihnen verlieren! - - Ich eilte hin und kehrte zurück und hatte nicht gefunden, was ich hoffte. O es ist mit der Ferne wie mit der Zukunft! Ein großes dämmerndes Ganze ruht vor unserer Seele, unsere Empfindung verschwimmt darin wie unser Auge, und wir sehnen uns, ach! unser ganzes Wesen hinzugeben, uns mit aller Wonne eines einzigen, großen, herrlichen Gefühls ausfüllen zu lassen.”

“A man's name is not like a mantle which merely hangs about him, and which one perchance may safely twitch and pull, but a perfectly fitting garment, which, like the skin, has grown over and over him, at which one cannot rake and scrape without injuring the man himself.”

“Few people have the imagination for reality.”