These Famous Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe Quotes and sayings on love and commitment will change the way you see yourself and others
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe was born on 28 August 1749 was a German poet, playwright, novelist, scientist, statesman, theatre director, critic, and amateur artist. He is considered one of the greatest literary figures of the modern era.
List of books by Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
- The Sorrows of Young Werther (1774)
- Faust, First Part (1808)
- Faust, Part Two
- Faust: Oerversie
- Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship
- Elective Affinities
- Italian Journey
- East-West Divan
- The Autobiography: Truth and poetry: from my own life
- Wilhelm Meisters Wanderjahre oder Die Entsagenden
- Hermann und Dorothea
- Egmont: A Tragedy in Five Acts
- Erotica Romana
- Götz von Berlichingen
- Iphigenie auf Tauris
- Die Marienbader Elegie / The Marienbad Elegy
- The Sorcerer’s Apprentice
- Prometheus : Faksimile
- Erlkönig
- The Fairy Tale of the Green Snake and the Beautiful Lily
- Theory of Colours
- Torquato Tasso
- The Metamorphosis of Plants (1788)
- The Natural Daughter: A Tragedy
- Clavigo
- Der Burgergeneral
Goethe’s father wanted for him to study law, so he left home in 1765 for his law degree but due to his illness, he had to return home without completing his degree. Goethe always had a passion for drawing but he quickly became interested in literature. He also loved reading works on history and religion.
Goethe was also known as Germany’s Shakespeare. He became famous at the age of 25 after the release of his first novel The Sorrows of Young Werther. But the novel Faust considered as his masterpiece.
Here we are sharing some Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe Quotes collected from various sources and his books.
Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe Quotes
“One ought, every day at least, to hear a little song, read a good poem, see a fine picture, and, if it were possible, to speak a few reasonable words.”
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship
“Everything is hard before it is easy”
― Goethe J.W.
“Who are you then?”
“I am part of that power which eternally wills evil and eternally works good.”
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Faust, First Part
“The soul that sees beauty may sometimes walk alone.”
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
“We must always change, renew, rejuvenate ourselves; otherwise, we harden.”
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
“Age does not make us childish, as some say; it finds us true children.”
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
“Music is liquid architecture; Architecture is frozen music.”
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
“Nothing is so strong as gentleness, nothing so gentle as real strength.”
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
“I am proud of my heart alone, it is the sole source of everything, all our strength, happiness and misery. All the knowledge I possess everyone else can acquire, but my heart is all my own”
― Goethe Wolfgang, The Sorrows of Young Werther
“If you treat an individual as he is, he will remain how he is. But if you treat him 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
The Sorrows Of Young Werther Quotes
“The person born with a talent they are meant to use will find their greatest happiness in using it. ”
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
“The greatest thing in this world is not so much where we stand as in what direction we are moving.”
― Johann wolfgang von Goethe
“You can’t if you can’t feel it if it never
Rises from the soul, and sways
The heart of every single hearer,
With the deepest power, in simple ways.
You’ll sit forever, gluing things together,
Cooking up a stew from other’s scraps,
Blowing on a miserable fire,
Made from your heap of dying ash.
Let apes and children praise your art,
If their admiration’s to your taste,
But you’ll never speak from heart to heart,
Unless it rises up from your heart’s space.”
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Faust, First Part
“Those who know nothing of foreign languages know nothing of their own.”
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Maxims and Reflections
“If God had wanted me otherwise, He would have created me otherwise.”
― Goethe
“No one is willing to believe that adults too, like children, wander about this earth in a daze and, like children, do not know where they come from or where they are going, act as rarely as they do according to genuine motives, and are as thoroughly governed as they are by biscuits and cake and the rod.”
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, The Sorrows of Young Werther
“We are our own devils; we drive ourselves out of our Edens.”
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
“At the moment of commitment the entire universe conspires to assist you.”
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
“We are shaped and fashioned by what we love.”
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
“A man should hear a little music, read a little poetry, and see a fine picture every day of his life, in order that worldly cares may not obliterate the sense of the beautiful which God has implanted in the human soul.”
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Goethe Faust Quotes
“Daring ideas are like chessmen moved forward. They may be beaten, but they may start a winning game.”
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
“As soon as you trust yourself, you will know how to live.”
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Faust, First Part
“There is strong shadow where there is much light.”
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Götz von Berlichingen
“Divide and rule, a sound motto. Unite and lead, a better one.”
― Johann wolfgang von Goethe
“People who think honestly and deeply have a hostile attitude towards the public.”
― Wolfgang Goethe
“Sometimes I don’t understand how another can love her, is allowed to love her, since I love her so completely myself, so intensely, so fully, grasp nothing, know nothing, have nothing but her!”
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, The Sorrows of Young Werther
“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.”
― 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, until they take root in our personal experience.”
― Goethe
“Talent develops in solitude, character develops in the stream of life.”
― Goethe, Schiller, Hebel, et al
“Love is an ideal thing, marriage a real thing; a confusion of the real with the ideal never goes unpunished.”
― Johann wolfgang von Goethe
Mephistopheles Quotes
“We do not have to visit a madhouse to find disordered minds; our planet is the mental institution of the universe.”
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
“I have possessed that heart, that noble soul, in whose presence I seemed to be more than I really was, because I was all that I could be.”
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
“If I love you, what business is it of yours?”
― Johann wolfgang von Goethe
“God help us — for art is long, and life so short.”
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Faust, First Part
“If you don’t feel it, you’ll never get it.”
― Goethe
“A man sees in the world what he carries in his heart.”
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Faust, First Part
“You can easily judge the character of a man by how he treats those who can do nothing for him.”
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
“There is nothing more frightful than ignorance in action.”
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Collected Works
“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.”
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, The Sorrows of Young Werther
“If you’ve never eaten while crying you don t know what life tastes like.”
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Johann Goethe Quotes
“It’s true that nothing in this world makes us so necessary to others as the affection we have for them.”
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, The Sorrows of Young Werther
“All theory is gray, my friend. But forever green is the tree of life.”
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Faust, First Part
“It is not doing the thing we like to do, but liking the thing we have to do, that makes life blessed.”
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
“If you would create something,
you must be something.”
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
“Dream no small dreams for they have no power to move the hearts of men.”
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
“What you get by achieving your goals is not as important as what you become by achieving your goals.”
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
“Choose well. Your choice is brief, and yet endless.”
― Goethe
“Is this the destiny of man? Is he only happy before he has acquired his reason or after he has lost it?”
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, The Sorrows of Young Werther
“Difficulties increase the nearer we get to the goal.”
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
“Treat people as if they were what they ought to be and you help them to become what they are capable of being.”
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Johann Von Goethe Quotes
“We know accurately only when we know little; doubt grows with knowledge.”
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
“To think is easy. To act is hard. But the hardest thing in the world is to act in accordance with your thinking.”
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
“I bid the chords sweet music make,
And all must follow in my wake.”
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
“Know thyself? If I knew myself, I’d run away.”
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free.”
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Elective Affinities
“Nothing shows a man’s character more than what he laughs at.”
― Goethe
“We are never deceived; we deceive ourselves. ”
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
“Leap and the net will appear.”
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
“Love does not dominate; it cultivates.”
― Goethe
“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.”
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Goethe Love Quotes
“Every reader, if he has a strong mind, reads himself into the book, and amalgamates his thoughts with those of the author.”
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
“One never goes so far as when one doesn’t know where one is going.”
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
“Remember to live.”
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
“Few people have the imagination for reality.”
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
“A person hears only what they understand.”
― Johann wolfgang von Goethe
“By seeking and blundering we learn.”
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
“Things which matter most must never be at the mercy of things which matter least.”
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
“Too many parents make life hard for their children by trying, too zealously, to make it easy for them.”
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
“Here too it’s masquerade, I find:
As everywhere, the dance of mind.
I grasped a lovely masked procession,
And caught things from a horror show…
I’d gladly settle for a false impression,
If it would last a little longer, though.”
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
“The intelligent man finds everything laughable, the sensible man hardly anything.”
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Goethe Boldness Quotes
“Doubt can only be removed by action.”
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
“There is nothing more dreadful than imagination without taste.”
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
“The suffering may be moral or physical; and in my opinion, it is just as absurd to call a man a coward who destroys himself, as to call a man a coward who dies of a malignant fever.”
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, The Sorrows of Young Werther
“The greatest evil that can befall man is that he should come to think ill of himself.”
― Goethe
“I laugh at my heart, and do its will.”
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
“Magic is believing in yourself, if you can do that, you can make anything happen.”
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
“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.”
― Goethe
“Whatever is a lot of humankind
I want to taste within my deepest self.
I want to seize the highest and the lowest,
to load its woe and bliss upon my breast,
and thus expand my single self titanically
and in the end, go down with all the rest.”
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Faust, First Part
“I have so much in me, and the feeling for her absorbs it all; I have so much, and without her, it all comes to nothing.”
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, The Sorrows of Young Werther
“Knowing is not enough; we must apply. Willing is not enough; we must do.”
― Johann wolfgang von Goethe
Goethe Famous Quotes
“What is uttered from the heart alone will win the heart of others to your own.”
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
“Once I blazed across the sky,
Leaving trails of flame;
I fell to earth, and here I lie –
Who’ll help me up again?
-A Shooting Star”
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
“Night is the other half of life, and the better half.”
― Goethe
“All that is transitory is but a metaphor.”
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
“Everybody wants to be somebody,but nobody wants to grow… ”
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
“Who is the happiest of men? He who values the merits of others, and in their pleasure takes joy, even as though ’twere his own. ”
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
“Oblivion is full of people who allow the opinions of others to overrule their belief in themselves.”
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
“He who cannot draw on three thousand years is living from hand to mouth.”
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
“Every day one should at least hear one little song, read one good poem, see one fine painting and — if at all possible — speak a few sensible words.”
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
“There is nothing worse than aggressive stupidity.”
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Goethe Quotes On Commitment
“Life belongs to the living, and he who lives must be prepared for changes.”
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
“I love those who yearn for the impossible.”
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
“Enjoy when you can, and endure when you must.”
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
“The rich want good wine, the poor, plenty of wine.”
― Goethe
“Two souls, alas, are housed within my breast,
And each will wrestle for the mastery there.”
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Faust
“What a torment it is to see so much loveliness passing and repassing before us, and yet not dare to lay hold of it!”
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, The Sorrows of Young Werther
“What I possess, seems far away to me, and what is gone becomes reality.”
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Faust, First Part
“Be above it! Make the world serve your purpose, but do not serve it!”
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
“We all of us live upon the past, and through the past we are destroyed.”
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
“One can stand anything except a succession of ordinary days.”
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Goethe Quotes, Sayings And Phrases
“We often feel that we lack something, and seem to see that very quality in someone else, promptly attributing all our own qualities to him too, and a kind of ideal contentment as well. And so the happy mortal is a model of complete perfection–which we have ourselves created.”
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, The Sorrows of Young Werther
“The highest goal that man can achieve is amazement.”
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Theory of Colours
“Every day I observe more and more the folly of judging of others by ourselves, and I have so much trouble with myself, and my own heart is in such constant agitation, that I am well content to let others pursue their own course if they only allow me the same privilege.”
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, The Sorrows of Young Werther
“There is no past we can bring back by longing for it. There is only an eternal now that builds and creates out of the past something new and better.”
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
“Misunderstandings and neglect occasion more mischief in the world than malice and wickedness.”
― Goethe
“He is happiest, be he king or peasant, who finds peace in his home.”
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
“I treat my heart like a sick child and gratify its every fancy.”
― Goethe Wolfgang, The Sorrows of Young Werther
“In happy ignorance, I sighed for a world I did not know, where I hoped to find every pleasure and enjoyment which my heart could desire; and now, on my return from that wide world… how many disappointed hopes and unsuccessful plans have I brought back!”
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, The Sorrows of Young Werther
“Every situation–nay, every moment–is of infinite worth; for it is the representative of a whole eternity.”
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
“The heights charm us, but the steps do not; with the mountain in our view we love to walk the plains.”
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
“All the knowledge I possess everyone else can acquire, but my heart is all my own.”
― Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
“Nothing is worth more than this day.”
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
“How often do I lull my seething blood to rest, for you have never seen anything so unsteady, so uncertain, as this heart.”
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, The Sorrows of Young Werther
Do you feel inspired by Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe Quotes?
Goethe’s work and writing include approximately 10,000 letters. In addition to it, approximately 3,000 drawings, treaties on color and four novels are also associated with him.
Goethe has been an inspiration to many philosophers at his time including Carl Jung, Friedrich Hegel, and Ludwig Wittgenstein. We hope this Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe Quotes on love and commitment will also inspire you and touch your heart in some way.
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