Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Quotes - Page 3

Who are you then?" "I am part of that power which eternally wills evil and eternally works good.

I could be living the best and happiest of lives if only I were not a fool.

Man needs only a small patch of earth for his pleasures, and a smaller one still to rest beneath.

I will say nothing... against the course of my existence. But at bottom it has been nothing but pain and burden, and I can affirm that during the whole of my 75 years, I have not had four weeks of genuine well-being. It is but the perpetual rolling of a rock that must be raised up again forever.

All force strives forward to work far and wideTo live and grow and ever to expand;Yet we are checked and thwarted on each sideBy the world's flux and swept along like sand:In this internal storm and outward tideWe hear a promise, hard to understand:From the compulsion that all creatures binds,Who overcomes himself, his freedom finds.

The affairs of the world are no more than so much trickery, and a man who toils for money or honour or whatever else in deference to the wishes of others, rather than because his own desire or needs lead him to do so, will always be a fool.

For in music there is no material to be deducted.

Choose well. Your choice is brief, and yet endless.

I will say nothing against the course of my existence. But at bottom it has been nothing but pain and burden, and I can affirm that during the whole of my 75 years, I have not had four weeks of genuine well-being. It is but the perpetual rolling of a rock that must be raised up again forever.

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

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.

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

He who cannot draw on three thousand years is living from hand to mouth.

A clever man commits no minor blunders.

There is nothing in which people more betray their character than in what they laugh at.

Literature decays only as men become more and more corrupt.

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

Let this little book be thy friend, if, owing to fortune or through thine own fault, thou canst not find a dearer companion.

Everything transitory is but an image.

Legislators and revolutionaries who promise equality and liberty at the same time, are either psychopaths or mountebanks.

Must it so be that whatever makes man happy must later become the source of his misery?

The best slave is the one who thinks he is free.

Nothing can be compared to the new life that the discovery of another country provides for a thoughtful person. Although I am still the same I believe to have changed to the bones.

All truly wise thoughts have been thought already thousands of times; but to make them truly ours, we must think them over again honestly, until they take root in our personal experience.

He who moves not forward, goes backward.

Wild dreams torment me as I lie. And though a god lives in my heart, though all my power waken at his word, though he can move my every inmost part - yet nothing in the outer world is stirred. thus by existence tortured and oppressed I crave for death, I long for rest.

If you've never eaten while crying you don t know what life tastes like.

I think of you when upon the sea the sun flings her beams. I think of you when the moonlight shines in silvery streams. I see you when upon the distant hills the dust awakes; At night when on a fragile bridge the traveler quakes.I hear you when the blows rise on high, with murmur deep. To tread the silent grove where wander I, When all's asleep.

National hatred is something peculiar. You will always find it strongest and most violent where there is the lowest degree of culture.

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.

Moreover I hate everything which merely instructs me without increasing or directly quickening my activity.

You are aware of only one unrest;Oh, never learn to know the other!Two souls, alas, are dwelling in my breast,And one is striving to forsake its brother.Unto the world in grossly loving zest,With clinging tendrils, one adheres;The other rises forcibly in questOf rarefied ancestral spheres.If there be spirits in the airThat hold their sway between the earth and sky,Descend out of the golden vapors thereAnd sweep me into iridescent life.Oh, came a magic cloak into my handsTo carry me to distant lands,I should not trade it for the choicest gown,Nor for the cloak and garments of the crown.

Men grieve [Mephistopheles] so with the days of their lamenting, [he] even hate[s] to plague them with [his] torments.

If any man wish to write in a clear style, let him be first clear in his thoughts; and if any would write in a noble style, let him first possess a noble soul.

One who has passed the thirtieth yearalready is as good as dead--it would be best to kill you off by then.

Those who have never seen themselves surrounded on all sides by the sea can never possess an idea of the world, and of their relation to it.

I have so much in me, and the feeling for her absorbs it all; I have so much, and without her it all comes to nothing.

There is no higher or purer pleasure than to sit with closed eyes and hear a naturally expressive voice recite... a play of Shakespeare's.

Nothing is more highly to be prized than the value of each day

Everything is hard before it is easy

Only air and light and the love of friends! Let no man lose heart who still has these.

If the whole world I once could seeOn free soil stand, with the people freeThen to the moment might I say,Linger awhile. . .so fair thou art.

Anything in the world can be endured, except a series of wonderful days.

Music is either sacred or profane. What is sacred accords completely with its nobility, and this is where music most immediately influences life; such influence remains unchanged at all times and in every epoch. Profane music should be altogether cheerful.Music of a kind that mixes the sacred with the profane is godless and shoddy music wich goes in for expressing feeble, wretched, deplorable feelings, and is just insipid. For it is not serious enough to be sacred and it lacks the chief quality of the opposite kind: cheerfulness.

God knows I often retire to my bed wishing (at times even hoping) that I might never wake up; and in the morning I open my eyes, see the sun once again, and am miserable.

The greatest thing in this world is not so much where we stand as in what direction we are moving.