Quotes from Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

I was on the point of breaking off the conversation, for nothing puts me so completely out of patience as the utterance of a wretched commonplace when I am talking from my inmost heart.

Does not man lack the force at the very point where he needs it most? And when he soars upward in joy, or sinks down in suffering, is not checked in both, is he not returned again to the dull, cold sphere of awareness, just when he was longing to lose himself in the fullness of the infinite.

As long as on the earth endures his life To deal with him have full and free permission; Man's hour on earth is weakness, error, strife.

That is the true season of love, when we believe that we alone can love, that no one could ever have loved so before us, and that no one will love in the same way as us.

It is better to do the smallest thing in the world than to hold half an hour to be too small a thing.

Would you require a wretched being, whose life is slowly wasting under a lingering disease, to despatch himself at once by the stroke of a dagger? Does not the very disorder which consumes his strength deprive him of the courage to effect his deliverance?

Let everyone sweep in front of his own door, and the whole world will be clean.

Did we force ourselves on you, or you on us?

Indeed, I am nothing but a wanderer and a pilgrim on this earth! And what more are you?

When a human awakens to a great dream and throws the full force of his soul over it, all the universe conspires in your favor.

Mußte denn das so sein, daß das, was des Menschen Glückseligkeit macht, wieder die Quelle seines Elendes würde?

I've studied now Philosophy And Jurisprudence, Medicine,— And even, alas! Theology,— From end to end, with labor keen; And here, poor fool! with all my lore I stand, no wiser than before:

Man is made by his belief. As he believes, so he is.

If there is confusion in your head and in your heart, what more do you want! A man who no longer loves and no longer errs should have himself buried straight away.

I do not know myself, and God forbid that I should.

Woe to him who could look on and say: The fool! If she had waited, if she had let time do its work, her despair would surely have subsided, another man would have turned up to comfort her.— That's just like saying: The fool, dying of fever! If he had waited until his strength returned, his circulation improved, the tumult of his blood calmed down, everything would have turned out well and he would still be alive today!

Es irrt der Mensch so lang er strebt

The world has always been the same - An endless farce, an antic game, A universal masquerade!

Happy is it, indeed, for me that my heart is capable of feeling the same simple and innocent pleasure as the peasant whose table is covered with food of his own rearing, and who not only enjoys his meal, but remembers with delight the happy days and sunny mornings when he planted it, the soft evenings when he watered it, and the pleasure he experienced in watching its daily growth.

Fortunately a human being can comprehend only a certain degree of unhappiness; anything beyond it destroys him or leaves him cold. There are situations in which fear and hope become one and the same, cancel one another out, and lose themselves in a dark insensateness. How else could we know the people we love best to be in continual danger and yet go on with our daily lives as usual?

In the realm of ideas, everything depends on enthusiasm. ... In the real world, all rests on perseverance.

One always has time enough, if one will apply it well.

I mean now to try and see her as soon as I can: or perhaps, on second thoughts, I had better not; it is better I should behold her through the eyes of her lover. To my sight, perhaps, she would not appear as she now stands before me; and why should I destroy so sweet a picture?

Fools and wise-folk are alike harmless. It is the half-wise, and the half-foolish, who are the most dangerous.