Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe Quotes - Page 4

All the knowledge I possess everyone else can acquire, but my heart is all my own.

Do not give in too much to feelings. A overly sensitive heart is an unhappy possession on this shaky earth.

Love is an ideal thing, marriage a real thing.

Literature decays only as men become more and more corrupt.

Everything is hard before it is easy

Wer nicht von dreitausend Jahren
sich weiß Rechenschaft zu geben,
bleib im Dunkeln unerfahren,
mag von Tag zu Tage leben.

En helaas hebben huwelijken in het algemeen iets lomps. Ze bederven de tederste verhoudingen, en dat komt toch eigenlijk alleen door de botte zekerheid waarvan ten minste één partij profiteert. Alles is vanzelfsprekend en men lijkt de verbintenis alleen gesloten te hebben opdat beiden hun eigen gang kunnen gaan.

I will say nothing against the course of my existence. But at bottom it has been nothing but pain and burden, and I can affirm that during the whole of my 75 years, I have not had four weeks of genuine well-being. It is but the perpetual rolling of a rock that must be raised up again forever.

I will say nothing... against the course of my existence. But at bottom it has been nothing but pain and burden, and I can affirm that during the whole of my 75 years, I have not had four weeks of genuine well-being. It is but the perpetual rolling of a rock that must be raised up again forever.

If you ask what the people here are like, I must tell you, "Like people everywhere!" Uniformity marks the human race.

There occurs the beautiful feeling that only humanity together is the true human being, and that the individual can be cheerful and happy only if he has the courage to feel himself in the Whole.

We look back on our life as a thing of broken pieces, because our mistakes and failures are always the first to strike us, and outweigh in our imagination what we have accomplished and attained.

Niemand ist mehr Sklave, als der sich für frei hält, ohne es zu sein.

None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free.

For in music there is no material to be deducted.

Nothing can be compared to the new life that the discovery of another country provides for a thoughtful person. Although I am still the same I believe to have changed to the bones.

Then indecision brings its own delays,
And days are lost lamenting over lost days.
Are you in earnest? Seize this very minute;
What you can do, or dream you can do, begin it;
Boldness has genius, power and magic in it.

The heights charm us, but the steps do not; with the mountain in our view we love to walk the plains.

Even people who are entirely strange and indifferent to one another will exchange confidences if they live together for a while, and a certain intimacy is bound to develop.

But there are times," said Charlotte, "when it is necessary and an act of friendship to write nothing rather than not to write.

Ältere Bekanntschaften und Freundschaften haben vor neuen hauptsächlich das voraus, dass man sich einander schon viel verziehen hat.