Quotes from Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

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

Every situation--nay, every moment--is of infinite worth; for it is the representative of a whole eternity.

It is a great pleasure to transport one's-self into the spirit of the times; to see how a wise man has thought before us, and to what a glorious height we have at last carried it.

To be pleased with one's limits is a wretched state.

If the mass of people hesitate to act, strike with swiftly and with boldness, the brave heart that understands and seizes opportunity can everything.

Before you can do something, you must first be something.

As long as you don't practice it, this dying and becoming, You are only a dreary guest on this dark earth.

Who is sure of their own motives can in confidence advance or retreat.

Keep not standing fixed and rooted. Briskly venture, briskly roam.

Do not hurry; do not rest.

Everyone is deceived in his hopes, cheated in his expectations.

One mind is enough for a thousand hands.

The present moment is a powerful goddess.

The greatest genius will not be worth much if he pretends to draw exclusively from his own resources

Then to the depths! - I could as well say height: It's all the same.

Lay hold of life with both hands, whenever thou mayest seize it, it is interesting.

Cease endlessly striving for what you would like to do and learn to love what must be done.

We cannot fashion our children after our desires, we must have them and love them as God has given them to us.

Passions are vices or virtues to their highest powers.

Love, whose power youth feels, is not suitable for the elderly, just as little as anything that presupposes productivity. It is rare that productivity lasts through the years.

Who enslaves another's manhood with weak human power alone, Lays a heavier yoke of bondage thoughtlessly upon his own.

Over the trackless past, somewhere, Lie the lost days of our tropic youth, Only regained by faith and prayer, Only recalled by prayer and plaint, Each lost day has its patron saint!

All intelligent thoughts have already been thought; what is necessary is only to try to think them again.

Everything great and intelligent is in the minority