Quotes from Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

If I wasn't a devil myself I'd give Me up to the Devil this very minute.

Mathematicians are like Frenchmen: whatever you say to them they translate into their own language and forthwith it is something entirely different.

People of uncommon abilities generally fall into eccentricities when their sphere of life is not adequate to their abilities.

A man's shortcomings are taken from his epoch; his virtues and greatness belong to himself.

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.

from desire I rush to satisfaction; from satisfaction I leap to desire.

The greater part of all the mischief in the world arises from the fact that men do not sufficiently understand their own aims.

It has ever been my fate to give pain to those whose happiness I should have promoted.

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

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

schade dass die Natur nur einen Mensch aus dir schuf / denn zum wurdigen Mann war und zum Schelmen der Stoff" (loose translation: nature, alas, made only one being out of you although there was material for a good man & a rogue)

Lose the day loitering, 'twill be the same story To-morrow, and the next more dilatory, For indecision brings its own delays, And days are lost lamenting o'er lost days. Are you in earnest? Seize this very minute! What you can do, or think you can, begin it! Only engage, and then the mind grows heated; Begin it, and the work will be completed.

We amuse ourselves painting our prison-walls with bright figures and brilliant landscapes.

If you inquire what the people are like here, I must answer, "The same as everywhere." The human race is but a monotonous affair. Most of them labour the greater part of their time for mere subsistence; and the scanty portion of freedom which remains to them so troubles them that they use every exertion to get rid of it. Oh, the destiny of man!

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

They should be ashamed of themselves, all these sober people!

The decline of literature indicates the decline of a nation.

It is not given to us to grasp the truth, which is identical with the divine, directly. We perceive it only in reflection, in example and symbol, in singular and related appearances. It meets us as a kind of life which is incomprehensible to us, and yet we cannot free ourselves from the desire to comprehend it.

Ich bin der Geist der stets verneint! Unde das mit Recht; denn alles was entsteht ist werth daß es zu Grunde geht; Drum besser wär's daß nichts entstünde. So ist denn alles was ihr Sünde, Zerstörung, kurz das Böse nennt, Mein eigentliches Element.

A clever man commits no minor blunders.

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

The finished man, you know, is difficult to please; a growing mind will ever show you gratitude. --Faust 1, lines 182-3

While Man's desires and aspirations stir, He cannot choose but err.

nothing puts me so completely out of patience as the utterance of a wretched commonplace when I am talking from my inmost heart.