Quotes from Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

A great deal may be done by severity, more by love, but most by clear discernment and impartial justice.

Ambition and love are the wings of great actions.

We are shaped and fashioned by what we love.- Henry Ward Beecher - I never knew how to worship until I knew how to love.

He who cannot love must learn to flatter.

Against great advantages in another, there are no means of defending ourselves except love.

There is a politeness of the heart; this is closely allied to love.

Love can do much, but duty more.

We don't get to know anything but what we love.

You don't love if you don't take the beloved's faults for virtues.

Give me those days with heart in riot, The depths of bliss that touched on pain, The force of hate, and love's disquiet- Ah, give me back my youth again!

I have so much in me, and the feeling for her absorbs it all; I have so much, and without her it all comes to nothing.

Confronted by outstanding merit, there is no way of saving one's ego except by love

If you live criticizing people, you won't have time to love them.

Letters are among the most significant memorial a person can leave behind them.

The intelligent man finds almost everything ridiculous, the sensible man hardly anything.

All things are only transitory.

Truth is a torch, but a terrific one; therefore we all try to reach it with closed eyes, lest we should be scorched.

Nothing is more damaging to the truth than an old error.

First and last, what is demanded of genius is love of truth.

Oh happy he who still can hope in our day to breathe the truth while plunged in seas of error! What we don't know is really what we need, and what we know is of no use to us whatever!

Mystery is truth's dancing partner.

Truth must be repeated again and again, because error is constantly being preached round about.

Errors belong to libraries; truth, to the human mind.

There is but one poetry,--true poetry.