Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Literature Quotations

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

The coward only threatens when he is safe.

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

If your treat an individual... as if he were what he ought to be and could be, he will become what he ought to be and could be.

We will burn that bridge when we come to it.

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

To witness two lovers is a spectacle for the gods.

There is nothing insignificant in the world. It all depends on the point of view.

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

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

Every step of life shows much caution is required.

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

Character is formed in the stormy billows of the world.

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

Being brilliant is no great feat if you respect nothing.

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

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

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

Nothing is more fearful than imagination without taste.

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.

Passions are vices or virtues to their highest powers.

The decline of literature indicates the decline of a nation.

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

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

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

No one has ever learned fully to know themselves.

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

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

To hard necessity ones will and fancy must conform.

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

What is my life if I am no longer useful to others.

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

National literature no longer means very much, the age of world literature is due.

Superstition is the poetry of life.

Whatever you cannot understand, you cannot possess.

The world remains ever the same.

All things are only transitory.

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

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

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.

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.

Mysteries are not necessarily miracles.

To create something you must be something.

Every spoken word arouses our self-will.

Age merely shows what children we remain.