Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Demand Quotations

But what is your duty? What the day demands. [Ger., Was aber ist deine Pflicht? Die Forderung des Tages.]

Duty is the demand of the hour.

What then is your duty? What the day demands.

Truth is contrary to our nature, not so error, and this for a very simple reason: truth demands that we should recognize ourselves as limited, error flatters us that, in one way or another, we are unlimited.

One is never satisfied with a portrait of persons whom one knows. That is why I have always pitied portraitists. One demands so seldom of others the impossible, but demands just that of the portraitists.

If you are to accomplish all that one demands of you, you must overestimate your own worth.

The work of art may have a moral effect, but to demand moral purpose from the artist is to make him ruin his work.