Johann Wolfgang von Goethe May Quotations

Everything in the world may be endured except continual prosperity.

I let everyone follow his own bent, that I may be free to follow mine.

The useful may be trusted to further itself, for many produce it and no one can do without it; but the beautiful must be specially encouraged, for few can present it, while yet all have need of it.

A great deal may be done by severity, more by love, but most by clear discernment and impartial justice.

People may live as much retired from the world as they please; but sooner or later, before they are aware, they will find themselves debtor or creditor to somebody.

Wherever a man may happen to turn, whatever a man may undertake, he will always end up by returning to that path which nature has marked out for him.

Light has called forth one organ to become its like, and thus the eye is formed by the light and for the light so that the inner light may emerge to meet the outer light.

No limit, no definition, may restrict the range or depth of the human spirit's passage into its own secrets or the world's.

Let us not dream that reason can ever be popular. Passions, emotions, may be made popular; but reason remains ever the property of an elect few.

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.]

I have observed that as long as one lives and bestirs himself, he can always find food and raiment, though it may not be of the choicest description.

What sort of faults may we retain, nay, even cherish in ourselves? Those faults which are rather pleasant than offensive to others.

He who is wise puts aside all claims which may dissipate his attention, and confining himself to one branch excels in that.

I consider him of no account who esteems himself just as the popular breath may chance to raise him.

These auspicious aspects, which the astrologers subsequently interpreted for me, may have been the causes of my preservation.

The artist may be well advised to keep his work to himself till it is completed, because no one can readily help him or advise him with it.. but the scientist is wiser not to withhold a single finding or a single conjecture from publicity.

He who wishes to exert a useful influence must be careful to insult nothing. Let him not be troubled by what seems absurd, but concentrate his energies to the creation of what is good. He must not demolish, but build. He must raise temples where mankind may come and partake of the purest pleasure.

To like things like, whatever one may ail; There is certain help.

There is nothing in life so irrational, that good sense and chance may not set it to rights; nothing so rational, that folly and chance may not utterly confound it.

The angles even Draw strength from gazing on its glance, Though none its meaning fathom may; The world's unwither'd countenance Is bright as at creation's day.

A man may twist as he pleases, and do what he pleases, but he inevitably comes back to the track to which nature has destined him.

What men usually say of misfortunes, that they never come alone, may with equal truth be said of good fortune; nay, of other circumstances which gather round us in a harmonious way, whether it arise from a kind of fatality, or that man has the power of attracting to himself things that are mutually related.

Say what we may of the inadequacy of translation, yet the work is and will always be one of the weightiest and worthiest undertakings in the general concerns of the world.

Let's plunge ourselves into the roar of time, the whirl of accident; may pain and pleasure, success and failure, shift as they will -- it's only action that can make a man.

Reason can never be popular. Passions and feelings may become popular, but reason will always remain the sole property of a few eminent individuals.