Quotes from Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Sin writes histories, goodness is silent.

I can promise to be sincere, but I cannot promise to be impartial.

Sin writes histories, goodness is silent. [Ger., Das Uebel macht eine Geschichte und das Gute keine.]

The best benefit we derive from history is the enthusiasm it excites.

For what one has in black and white, One can carry home in comfort.

Money lost, something lost. Honor lost, much lost. Courage lost, everything lost-better you were never born

[Alexander von] Humboldt showers us with true treasures.

We always hope, and in all things it is better to hope than to despair.

Correction does much, but encouragement does more. Encouragement after censure is as the sun after a shower.

Hope enough to remove all anxious fears concerning the future.

Don't say that you want to give, but go ahead and give! You'll never catch up with a mere hope.

I am certain that I have been here as I am now a thousand times before, and I hope to return a thousand times.

How happy he who can still hope to lift himself from this sea of error! What we know not, that we are anxious to possess, and cannot use what we know.

In all things it is better to hope than to despair.

Common sense is the genius of humanity.

We don't get to know people when they come to us; we must go to them to find out what they are like.

Humor is one of the elements of genius--admirable as an adjunct; but as soon as it becomes dominant, only a surrogate for genius.

Reality surpasses imagination; and we see, breathing, brightening, and moving before our eyes sights dearer to our hearts than any we ever beheld in the land of sleep.

There is nothing more fearful than imagination without taste. [Ger., Es ist nichts furchterlicher als Einbildungskraft ohne Geschmack.]

To think is easy. To act is hard. But the hardest thing in the world is to act in accordance with your thinking.

Mountains cannot be surmounted except by winding paths.

Difficulties increase the nearer we get to the goal.

Fresh activity is the only means of overcoming adversity.

If your treat an individual... as if he were what he ought to be and could be, he will become what he ought to be and could be.