Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Lit Quotations

With little wit and ease to suit them, They whirl in narrow circling trails, Like kittens playing with their tails.

Whoever gives himself up to solitude, Ah! he is soon alone.

With little art, clear wit and sense Suggest their own delivery.

A noble soul alone can noble souls attract; And knows alone, as ye, to hold them.

Good children's literature appeals not only to the child in the adult, but to the adult in the child.

The ideal of beauty is simplicity and tranquility.

The highest problem of any art is to cause by appearance the illusion of a higher reality.

Men are joined by conviction, sundered by opinion.

The realization of the self is only possible if one is productive, if one can give birth to one's own potentialities.

The soul is indestructible and its activity will continue through eternity. It is like the sun, which, to our eyes, seems to set at night; but it has in reality only gone to diffuse its light elsewhere.

The most original of authors are not so because they advance what is new, but more because they know how to say something, as if it had never been said before.

To have more, you must first be more.

Nothing will change the fact that I cannot produce the least thing without absolute solitude.

The decline in literature indicates a decline in the nation. The two keep pace in their downward tendency.

One that does not think to highly of himself is more than he thinks.

Individuality of expression is the beginning and end of all art.

Our modern wars make many unhappy while they last and none happy when they are over.

Patriotism corrupts history.

Legislators and revolutionaries who promise both equality and liberty are visionaries and charlatans.

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

Nothing is more dangerous than solitude.

It matters little whether a man be mathematically or philologically or artistically cultivated, so he be but cultivated.

The mark of highest originality lies in the ability to develop a familiar idea so fruitfully that it would seem no one else would ever have discovered so much to be hidden in it.

Piety, like nobility, has its aristocracy.

Poor fool! in whose petty estimation all things are little.

The little man is still a man.

We are not all equal, nor can we be so.

Man's highest merit always is, as much as possible, to rule external circumstances and as little as possible to let himself be ruled by them.

Here too it’s masquerade, I find: As everywhere, the dance of mind. I grasped a lovely masked procession, And caught things from a horror show… I’d gladly settle for a false impression, If it would last a little longer, though.

What I possess, seems far away to me, and what is gone becomes reality.

Upon the creatures we have made, we are, ourselves, at last, dependent.

To the person with a firm purpose all men and things are servants.

To hard necessity ones will and fancy must conform.

Superstition is the poetry of life.

He who has a task to perform must know how to take sides, or he is quite unworthy of it.

One cannot develop taste from what is of average quality but only from the very best.

I will listen to anyone's convictions, but pray keep your doubts to yourself.

What by a straight path cannot be reached by crooked ways is never won.

Passions are vices or virtues to their highest powers.

Whatever you cannot understand, you cannot possess.

The world remains ever the same.

I never knew a more presumptuous person than myself. The fact that I say that shows that what I say is true.

Character is formed in the stormy billows of the world.

All that is alive tends toward color, individuality, specificity, effectiveness and opacity. All that is done with life inclines toward knowledge, abstraction, generality transfiguration and transparency.

Wishes are premonitions of abilities.

Solitude is fine when you are at peace with yourself and have something definite to do.

We are pantheists when we study nature, polytheists when we write poetry, monotheists in our morality.

Most men, even the most accomplished, are of limited faculties; every one sets a value on certain qualities in himself and others: these alone he is willing to favour, these alone will he have cultivated.

The errors of the observer come from the qualities of the human mind.

No matter what one says, you can recognize only those matters that are equal to you. Only rulers who possess extraordinary abilities will recognize and esteem properly extraordinary abilities in their subjects and servants.

People can only live with their equals, and not even with them; for in the long run they cannot tolerate that someone is their equal.

We who didn't inherit political power nor are made to acquire riches like nothing better than that which expands and solidifies the power of the spirit.

Nothing is more fearful than imagination without taste.

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

We will burn that bridge when we come to it.

All things are only transitory.

Certain defects are necessary for the existence of individuality.

The biggest problem with every art is by the use of appearance to create a loftier reality.

Deeply earnest and thoughtful people stand on shaky footing with the public.

Every step of life shows much caution is required.

A noble person attracts noble people, and knows how to hold on to them.

Great thoughts and a pure heart, that is what we should ask from God.

Talents are nurtured best in solitude, But character on life's tempestuous seas!

When one is polite in German, one lies.

I have never looked at foreign countries or gone there but with the purpose of getting to know the general human qualities that are spread all over the earth in very different forms, and then to find these qualities again in my own country and to recognize and to further them.

So much has already been said about Shakespeare that there doesn't seem to be anything more to say; yet it is the quality of the spirit that it forever stimulates the spirit.

In politics people throw themselves, as on a sickbed, from one side to the other in the belief they will lie more comfortably.

National literature does not mean much these days; now is the age of world literature, and every one must contribute to hasten thearrival of that age.

Only that type of story deserves to be called moral that shows us that one has the power within oneself to act, out of the conviction that there is something better, even against one's own inclination.

Few men have imagination enough for reality.

Originality provokes originality.

All lyrical work must, as a whole, be perfectly intelligible, but in some particulars a little unintelligible.

Literature is a fragment of a fragment. Of all that ever happened, or has been said, but a fraction has been written; and of this but little is extant.

A man is not little when he finds it difficult to cope with circumstances, but when circumstances overmaster him.

Talent is nurtured in solitude; character is formed in the stormy billows of the world. [Ger., Es bildet ein talent sich in der Stille, Sich ein Charakter in dem Strom der Welt.]

Riches amassed in haste will diminish; but those collected by hand and little by little will multiply.

True religion teaches us to reverence what is under us, to recognize humility and poverty, and, despite mockery and disgrace, wretchedness, suffering, and death, as things divine.

Toleration ought in reality to be merely a transitory mood. It must lead to recognition. To tolerate is to affront.

I hate all bungling as I do sin, but particularly bungling in politics, which leads to the misery and ruin of many thousands and millions of people.

Mysteries are not necessarily miracles.

To create something you must be something.

Every spoken word arouses our self-will.

To appreciate the noble is a gain which can never be torn from us.

Age merely shows what children we remain.

For just when ideas fail, a word comes in to save the situation.

Every person above the ordinary has a certain mission that they are called to fulfill.

Objects in pictures should so be arranged as by their very position to tell their own story.

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

Be above it! Make the world serve your purpose, but do not serve it.

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

If you start to think of your physical and moral condition, you usually find that you are sick.

Personality is everything in art and poetry.

There is nothing in the world more shameful than establishing one's self on lies and fables.

Divide and rule, the politician cries; unite and lead, is watchword of the wise.

Being brilliant is no great feat if you respect nothing.

The clever reader who is capable or reading between these lines what does not stand written in them but is nevertheless implied will be able to form some conception.

Desire is the presentiment of our inner abilities, and the forerunner of our ultimate accomplishments.

People have a peculiar pleasure in making converts, that is, in causing others to enjoy what they enjoy, thus finding their own likeness represented and reflected back to them.

He who is plenteously provided for from within needs but little from without.

He who is and remains true to himself and to others has the most attractive quality of the greatest talent.