Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (28 August 1749 – 22 March 1832) was a German writer, philosopher and thinker. He worked in diverse fields such as poetry, drama, religion, humanity and science. His play Faust holds a high place in world literature. Goethe’s other works include “The Sorrow of the Young Verter”. Goethe is considered one of Germany’s greatest literary figures, who started the movement known as Weimar Classicism in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The Weimar movement is a combination of perception, sensation and romanticism. Here is collection of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Quotes and sayings about love, education life and friendship to inspire you.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Quotes
- Every man hears only what he understands.—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
- Seldom in the business and transactions of ordinary life, do we find the sympathy we want.—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Method will teach you to win time.—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
- Out of moderation a pure happiness springs.—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
- Strike the dog dead, it’s but a critic!—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
- A man’s manners are the mirror in which he shows his portrait.—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
- He who does not expect a million readers should not write a line.—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
- Instruction does much, but encouragement does everything.—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
- Every author in some degree portrays himself in his works, even if it be against his will.—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
- The man who cannot enjoy his own natural gifts in silence, and find his reward in the exercise of them, will generally find himself badly off.—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
- Some of our weakness is born in us, some of it comes through education; it is a big question as to which gives us the most trouble.—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
- Then indecision brings its own delays, And days are lost lamenting o’er lost days. Are you in earnest? Seize this very minute; What you can do, or dream you can, begin it.—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
- Since Time is not a person we can overtake when he is gone, let us honor him with mirth and cheerfulness of heart while he is passing.—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
- Nature knows no pause in progress and development, and attaches her curse on all inaction.—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
- 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.—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
It is in self-limitation that a master first shows himself.—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
- Certain flaws are necessary for the whole. It would seem strange if old friends lacked certain quirks.—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
- If children grew up according to early indications, we should have nothing but geniuses.—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
- 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.—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
- The child, offered the mother’s breast,
- Will not in the beginning grab it; But soon it clings to it with zest. And thus at wisdom’s copious breasts, You’ll drink each day with greater zest.—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
- The senses do not deceive us, but the judgment does.—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
- The greatest joy of a thinking man is to have searched the explored and to quietly revere the unexplored.—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
- Traveling is like gambling: it is always connected with winning and losing, and generally where it is least expected we receive, more or less than what we hoped for.—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
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- It is better to be doing the most insignificant thing than to reckon even a half-hour insignificant.—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
- It never occurs to fools that merit and good fortune are closely united.—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
- Only when we know little do we know anything; doubt grows with knowledge.—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
- No prudent antagonist thinks light of his adversaries.—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
- A reasonable man needs only to practice moderation to find happiness.—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
- No one as ever completed their apprenticeship.—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
- The man who acts never has any conscience; no one has any conscience but the man who thinks.—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
- If you 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.—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
- Sound and sufficient reason falls, after all, to the share of but few men, and those few men exert their influence in silence.—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
- The most foolish of all errors is for clever young men to believe that they forfeit their originality in recognizing a truth which has already been recognized by others.—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Kindness is the golden chain by which society is bound together.—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
- Enjoy what thou hast inherited from thy sires if thou wouldst really possess it.—What we employ and use is never an oppressive burden; what the moment brings forth, that only can it profit by.—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
- A man’s name is not like a mantle which merely hangs about him, and which one perchance may safely twitch and pull, but a perfectly fitting garment, which, like the skin, has grown over him, at which one cannot rake and scrape without injuring the man himself.—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
- All truly wise thoughts have been thought 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.—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
- We must not hope to be mowers And to gather the ripe gold ears, Unless we have first been sowers, And watered the furrows with tears. It is not just as we take it, This mystical world of ours: Life’s field will yield as we make it, A harvest of thorns or of flowers.—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
- Superstition is the poetry of life. It is inherent in man’s nature; and when we think it is wholly eradicated, it takes refuge in the strangest holes and corners, whence it peeps out all at once, as soon, as it can do it with safety.—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe