Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Per Quotations

Experience is only half of experience.

There are but two roads that lead to an important goal and to the doing of great things: strength and perseverance. Strength is the lot of but a few privileged men; but austere perseverance, harsh and continuous, may be employed by the smallest of us and rarely fails of its purpose, for its silent power grows irresistibly greater with time.

I have found a paper of mine among some others in which I call architecture 'petrified music.' Really there is something in this; the tone of mind produced by architecture approaches the effect of music.

Let no one be like another, yet everyone like the highest. How is this done? Be each one perfect in himself.

Nothing is more consonant with Nature than that she puts into operation in the smallest detail that which she intends as a whole.

Yes! to this thought I hold with firm persistence; The last result of wisdom stamps it true; He only earns his freedom and existence Who daily conquers them anew.

No one as ever completed their apprenticeship.

An angel! Nonsense! Everybody so describes his mistress; and yet I find it impossible to tell you how perfect she is, or why she is so perfect: suffice it to say she has captivated all my senses.

As to the value of conversions, God alone can judge. God alone can know how wide are the steps which the soul has to take before it can approach to a community with Him, to the dwelling of the perfect, or to the intercourse and friendship of higher natures.

Everything perfect in its kind has to transcend its own kind, it must become something different and incomparable. In some notes the nightingale is still a bird; then it rises above its class and seems to suggest to every winged creature what singing is truly like.

As soon as any one belongs to a narrow creed in science, every unprejudiced and true perception is gone.

Could we perfect human nature, we might also expect a perfect state of things.

Secrecy has many advantages, for when you tell someone the purpose of any object right away, they often think there is nothing to it.

Oral delivery aims at persuasion and making the listener believe they are converted. Few persons are capable of being convinced the majority allow themselves to be persuaded.

A mathematician is only perfect insofar as he is a perfect man, sensitive to the beauty of truth.

Death is Nature's expert advice to get plenty of Life.

Perseverance is a silent power that grows irresistibly greater with time.

The nude is the perfect expression of freedom. Freedom to be.

There is no remedy but love for the great superiority of others

Even the lowliest, provided he is whole, can be happy, and in his own . way, perfect.

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

Superstition belongs to the essence of mankind and takes refuge, when one thinks one has suppressed it completely, in the strangest nooks and crannies; once it is safely ensconced there, it suddenly reappears.

There is nothing outside of us that is not at the same time in us, and as the external world has its colors the eye, too, has colors.

Idea and experience will never coincide in the center; only through art and action are they united.

Superstition is the poesy of practical life; hence, a poet is none the worse for being superstitious.

Superstition is part of the poetry of life.

Whoso is content with pure experience and acts upon it has enough of truth.

The spectacle of Nature is always new, for she is always renewing the spectators. Life is her most exquisite invention; and death is her expert contrivance to get plenty of life.

The field of experience is the whole universe in all directions. Theory remains shut up within the limits of human faculties.

Austere perseverance, hash and continuous... rarely fails of its purpose, for its silent power grows irresistible greater with time.

Superstition is the poetry of life.

Everything in the world may be endured except continual prosperity.

Nothing is to be rated higher than the value of the day.

Do not give in too much to feelings. A overly sensitive heart is an unhappy possession on this shaky earth.

Everything in the world may be endured, except only a succession of prosperous days. [Ger., Alles in der Welt lasst sich ertragen, Nur nicht eine Reihe von schonen Tagen.]

Vanity is a desire of personal glory, the wish to be appreciated, honoured, and run after, not because of one's personal qualities, merits, and achievements, but because of one's individual existence. At best, therefore, it is a frivolous beauty whim it befits.

The style of writing required in the great world is distinguished by a free and daring grace, a careless security, a fine and sharp polish, a delicate and perfect taste; while that fitted for the people is characterized by a vigorous natural fulness, a profound depth of feeling, and an engaging naivete.

Only the heart without a stain knows perfect ease. [Ger., Ganz unbefleckt geniesst sich nur das Herz.]

No two men see the world exactly alike, and different temperaments will apply in different ways a principle that they both acknowledge.

Personality is everything in art and poetry.

In the realm of ideas everything depends on enthusiasm... in the real world all rests on perseverance.

Perfection is the measure of heaven, and the wish to be perfect the measure of man.

Few are open to conviction, but the majority of men are open to persuasion

I have found among my papers a sheet . . . in which I call architecture frozen music.

A person is never happy till their vague strivings has itself marked out its proper limitations.

All truly wise thoughts have been thoughts already thousands of times; but to make them truly ours, we must think them over again honestly, till they take root in our personal experience.

The persons born with a talent they are meant to use will find their greatest happiness in using it.

Someday perhaps the inner light will shine forth from us, and then we'll need no other light

A collection of anecdotes and maxims is the greatest of treasures for the man of the world, for he knows how to intersperse conversation with the former in fit places, and to recollect the latter on proper occasions

The further one advances in experience, the closer one comes to the unfathomable; the more one learns to utilize experience, the more one recognizes that the unfathomable is of no practical value.

Difficulties increase the nearer we get to the goal.

We often feel that we lack something, and seem to see that very quality in someone else, promptly attributing all our own qualities to him too, and a kind of ideal contentment as well. And so the happy mortal is a model of complete perfection--which we have ourselves created.

Superstition is rooted in a much deeper and more sensitive layer of the psyche than skepticism.

The really unhappy person is the one who leaves undone what they can do, and starts doing what they don't understand; no wonder they come to grief.

We can always redeem the man who aspires and strives.

We do not have to visit a madhouse to find disordered minds; our planet is the mental institution of the universe.