Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe Quotes

He who moves not forward, goes backward.

If I love you, what business is it of yours?

The world is so empty if one thinks only of mountains, rivers & cities; but to know someone who thinks & feels with us, & who, though distant, is close to us in spirit, this makes the earth for us an inhabited garden.

Let mental culture go on advancing, let the natural sciences progress in even greater extent and depth, and the human mind widen itself as much as it desires: beyond the elevation and moral culture of Christianity, as it shines forth in the Gospels, it will not go.

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

If the whole world I once could see
On free soil stand, with the people free
Then to the moment might I say,
Linger awhile. . .so fair thou art.

The human race is a monotonous affair. Most people spend the greatest part of their time working in order to live, and what little freedom remains so fills them with fear that they seek out any and every means to be rid of it.

Art is long, life short, judgment difficult, opportunity transient. To act is easy, to think is hard; to act according to our thought is troublesome.

nothing puts me so completely out of patience
as the utterance of a wretched commonplace
when I am talking from my inmost heart.

I was on the point of breaking off the conversation, for nothing puts me so completely out of patience as the utterance of a wretched commonplace when I am talking from my inmost heart.

The limits of my language are the limits of my universe.

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

Let everyone sweep in front of his own door, and the whole world will be clean.

This is the true measure of love: when we believe that we alone can love, that no one could ever have loved so before us, and that no one will ever love in the same way after us.

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

As soon as you trust yourself, you will know how to live.

If you've never eaten while crying you don t know what life tastes like.

There is nothing more frightful than ignorance in action.

Life belongs to the living, and he who lives must be prepared for changes.

If you would create something,
you must be something.