Quotes from Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

It would be a lowly art that allowed itself to be understood all at once.

What I possess, I see far distant lying, And what I lost, grows real and undying.

All things transient are but a parable.

If we put ourselves in the place of other people, the jealousy and hatred we so often feel about them would disappear, and if we put others in our place, pride and conceit would greatly diminish.

I call him happy who still hopes to rise To the surface in this sea of error. The very things we don't know, we could use And what we do know we have no use for.

Grau, teurer Freund, ist alle Theorie und grün des Lebens goldner Baum

To me the mountain mass lies nobly mute, The whences and the whys I don't dispute. When Nature by and in herself was founded, In purity the earthen sphere she rounded. In summit and in gorge did pleasure seek, And threaded cliff to cliff and peak to peak; Then did she fashion sloping hills at peace And gently down into the vale release. All greens and grows, and to her gay abundance Your swirling lunacies are sheer redundance.

Real obscurantism is not to hinder the spread of what is true, clear, and useful, but to bring into vogue what is false.

Dust shall he eat, and greedily, like my celebrated serpent-cousin

What matters our creative endless toil, When at a snatch, oblivion ends the coil? 'It is by-gone' - How shall the riddle run? As good as if things never had begun, Yet circle back, existence to possess: I'd rather have eternal Emptiness.

It seems it has been my fate to sadden those I should have made happy.

We so frequently feel that we are lacking in many qualities which another person apparently possesses; and then we furnish such a person with everything we oirselves possess and witj a certain idealistic complacemny in addition. And in this fashion a Happy Being is finished to perfection--the creature of our imagination.

There occurs the beautiful feeling that only humanity together is the true human being, and that the individual can be cheerful and happy only if he has the courage to feel himself in the Whole.

The question, therefore, is, not whether a man is strong or weak, but whether he is able to endure the measure of his sufferings.

Într-adev?r ?tiu multe, dar a? vrea s? ?tiu totul.

Ganz war mein Herz an deiner Seite Und jeder Atemzug für dich.

He is a prophet and not a poet and therefore his Koran is to be seen as a divine law and not as a book of a human being, made for education or entertainment.

What's foreign one can't always keep quite clear of, For good things, oft, are not so near; A German can't endure the French to see or hear of, Yet drinks their wines with hearty cheer.

Sí; yo no soy otra cosa que un viajero, un peregrino en el mundo. ¿Y tú? ¿Eres algo más?

The eternal feminine draws us on high.

But there are times," said Charlotte, "when it is necessary and an act of friendship to write nothing rather than not to write.

Everything that frees our spirit without giving us control of ourselves is ruinous.

Ein guter Mensch in seinem dunklen Drange Ist sich des rechten Weges wohl bewusst.

Mas o mau humor não seria antes uma irritação íntima em razão do sentimento de nossa própria insuficiência, um descontentamento em relação a nós mesmos, ao qual se junta sempre a inveja em razão de uma vaidade idiota? Quando vemos algumas pessoas felizes, sem que para isso tenhamos contribuído, essa felicidade nos é insuportável.