Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Great Quotations

Ambition and love are the wings to great deeds.

All greatness in the world came about because someone did more than he had to do.

What chance gathers she easily scatters. A great person attracts great people and knows how to hold them together.

Nature alone is illimitably rich, and Nature alone forms the great artist.

I respect the man who knows distinctly what he wishes. The greater part of all mischief in the world arises from the fact that men do not sufficiently understand their own aims. They have undertaken to build a tower, and spend no more labor on the foundation than would be necessary to erect a hut.

The greatest genius will never be worth much if he pretends to draw exclusively from his own resources.

The man who is born with a talent which he was meant to use finds his greatest happiness in using it.

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

I find the great thing in this world is, not so much where we stand, as in what direction we are moving.

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

When all is said the greatest action is to limit and isolate one's self.

To make an epoch in the world, two conditions are manifestly essential-a good head and a great inheritance.

A great scholar is seldom a great philosopher.

Beautiful is greater than Good, for it includes the Good.

If you have a great work in your head, nothing else thrives near it; all other thoughts are repelled, and the pleasure of life itself is for the time lost.

The greater the knowledge, the greater the doubt.

Ye great teachers: listen to what you say!

A man's shortcomings are taken from his epoch; his virtues and greatness belong to himself.

The world cannot do without great men, but great men are very troublesome to the world.

We must be young to do great things.

Many people take no care of their money till they come nearly to the end of it, and others do just the same with their time.

For a man to achieve all that is demanded of him, he must regard himself as greater than he is

He alone is great and happy who requires neither to command nor to obey in order to secure his being of some importance in this world

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