Quotes from Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

The thinker makes a great mistake when he asks after cause and effect. They both together make up the indivisible phenomenon.

To be loved for what one is, that is the greatest exception. The great majority love in others only what they lend him; their own selves, their version of him.

Everywhere, we learn only from those whom we love.

Whatever you cannot understand, you cannot possess.

We can't form our children on our own concepts; we must take them and love them as God gives them to us.

Sometimes I don't understand how another can love her, is allowed to love her, since I love her so completely myself, so intensely, so fully, grasp nothing, know nothing, have nothing but her!

In praising or loving a child, we love and praise not that which is, but that which we hope for.

The world remains ever the same.

He who does not think much of himself is much more esteemed than he imagines.

Beauty is a manifestation of secret natural laws, which otherwise would have been hidden from us forever.

Know thyself? If I knew myself I would run away.

No one would talk much in society if they knew how often they misunderstood others.

There are situations in which hope and fear run together, in which they mutually destroy one another and lose themselves in dull indifference.

The traveler was active; he went strenuously in search of people, of adventure, of experience. The tourist is passive.

Traveling is like gambling: it is always connected with winning and losing and generally where it is least expected we receive, more or less than what we hoped for.

You don't have to travel around the world to understand that the sky is blue everywhere

Sometimes our fate resembles a fruit tree in winter. Who would think that those branches would turn green again and blossom, but we hope it, we know it.

Care is taken that trees do not grow into the sky.

All theory, my friend, is grey, But green is life's glad golden tree.

Care is taken that trees do not grow into the sky. [Ger., Es ist dafur gesorgt, dass die Baume nicht in den Himmel wachsen.]

The older I get the more I trust in the law according to which the rose and the lily bloom.

Always to distrust is an error, as well as always to trust.

Just trust yourself and you'll learn the art of living.

The first and last thing required of genius is the love of truth. [Ger., Das erste und letzte, was vom Genie gefordert wird, ist Wahreits-Liebe.]