Quotes from Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Dear friend, all theory is gray,And green the golden tree of life.

Man's highest merit always is, as much as possible, to rule external circumstances and as little as possible to let himself be ruled by them.

Which government is the best? The one that teaches us to govern ourselves.

We lay aside letters never to read them again, and at last we destroy them out of discretion, and so disappears the most beautiful, the most immediate breath of life, irrecoverable for ourselves and for others.

If man thinks about his physical or moral state he usually discovers that he is ill.

We really only learn from books we cannot judge. The author of a book we could really judge ought surely to be learning from us.

Everything which is properly business we must keep carefully separate from life. Business requires earnestness and method; life must have a freed handling.

A man can stand anything except a succession of ordinary days.

Against criticism a man can neither protest nor defend himself he must act in spite of it, and then it will gradually yield to him.

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

Beware of dissipating your powers strive constantly to concentrate them. Genius thinks it can do whatever it sees others doing, but is sure to repent of every ill-judged outlay.

Everything in the world may be endured, except continual prosperity.

How can you come to know yourself Never by thinking, always by doing. Try to do your duty, and you'll know right away what you amount to.

More light! Give me more light!

Oh God, how do the world and heavens confine themselves, when our hearts tremble in their own barriers!

One ought, every day at least, to hear a little song, read a good poem, see a fine picture and, if possible, speak a few reasonable words.

Only learn to seize good fortune, for good fortune is always here.

Reason can never be popular. Passions and feelings may become popular, but reason will always remain the sole property of a few eminent individuals.

The artist alone sees spirits. But after he has told of their appearing to him, everybody sees them

The true, prescriptive artist strives after artistic truth; the lawless artist, following blind instinct, after an appearance of naturalness. The one leads to the highest peaks of art, the other to its lowest depths.

There is a courtesy of the heart; it is allied to love. From its springs the purest courtesy in the outward behavior.

There is nothing more frightful than imagination without taste.

Three things are to be looked to in a building: that it stands on the right spot; that it be securely founded; that it be successfully executed."

Treat a man as he appears to be, and you make him worse. But treat a man as if he were what he potentially could be, and you make him what he should be.