Quotes from Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

The greatest difficulties lie where we are not looking for them.

If you call a thing bad you do little, if you call a thing good you do much

The little that is completed, vanishes from the sight of one who looks forward to what is still to do.

Each indecision brings its own delays and days are lost lamenting over lost days... What you can do or think you can do, begin it. For boldness has magic, power, and genius in it.

Don't dissipate your powers; strive to concentrate them. Genius thinks it can do whatever it sees others doing, but it will surely repent of every ill-judged outlay.

What is predestination? Answer: God is more powerful and wiser than we are, therefore he deals with us according to his pleasure.

We should treat children as God does us, who makes us happiest when He leaves us under the influence of innocent delusions.

Were not the eye made to receive the rays of the sun, it could not behold the sun; if the peculiar power of God lay not in us, how could the godlike charm us?

I believe in God and in nature and in the triumph of good over evil.

Thank God when He lays a burden on thee, and thank Him when He takes it off.

Nature is the living, visible garment of God.

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

Reason looks at necessity as the basis of the world; reason is able to turn chance in your favor and use it. Only by having reasonremain strong and unshakable can we be called a god of the earth.

What sort of God would it be, who only pushed from without.

Thank God when he oppresses you, and again when he releases you.

If a good person does you wrong, act as though you had not noticed it. If we practice and eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, soon the wholeworld will be blind and toothless.

It seems to never occur to fools that merit and good fortune are closely united.

In art, the best is good enough.

Go to foreign countries and you will get to know the good things one possesses at home.

A good person, striving dimly, Is well aware of the right path.

The bad thing is that thinking about thought doesn't help at all; one has to have it from nature so that the good ideas appear before us like free children of God calling to us: Here we are.

Accepting good advice means nothing other than to strengthen one's own ability.

The dear good people don't know how long it takes to learn to read. I've been at it eighty years, and can't say yet that I've reached the goal.

Wouldst thou ever roam abroad? See, what is good lies by thy side. Only learn to catch happiness, for happiness is ever by you.