Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
The old lose one of the greatest privileges of man, for they are no longer judged by their contemporaries.
The decline in literature indicates a decline in the nation. The two keep pace in their downward tendency.
Do not give in too much to feelings. A overly sensitive heart is an unhappy possession on this shaky earth.
Every situation--nay, every moment--is of infinite worth; for it is the representative of a whole eternity.
Money lost, something lost. Honor lost, much lost. Courage lost, everything lost-better you were never born
What makes people happy is activity; changing evil itself into good by power, working in a God like manner.
He who is and remains true to himself and to others has the most attractive quality of the greatest talent.
If I work incessantly to the last, nature owes me another form of existence when the present one collapses.
If a man or woman is born ten years sooner or later, their whole aspect and performance shall be different.
To make an epoch in the world, two conditions are manifestly essential-a good head and a great inheritance.
Every man bears something within him that, if it were publicly announced, would excite feelings of aversion.
Correction does much, but encouragement does more. Encouragement after censure is as the sun after a shower.
Let no one be like another, yet everyone like the highest. How is this done? Be each one perfect in himself.
The written word has this advantage, that it lasts and can await the time when it is allowed to take effect.
I never knew a more presumptuous person than myself. The fact that I say that shows that what I say is true.
Love is an ideal thing, marriage a real thing; a confusion of the real with the ideal never goes unpunished.
No one knows what he is doing so long as he is acting rightly; but of what is wrong one is always conscious.
The eye doesn't see any shapes, it sees only what is differentiated through light and dark or through colors.
Tolerance should really only be a passing attitude: it should lead to appreciation. To tolerate is to offend.
For a brave man deserves a well-endowed girl. [Ger., Denn ein wackerer Mann verdient ein begutertes Madchen.]
Shakespeare is a great psychologist, and whatever can be known of the heart of man may be found in his plays.
The highest happiness of man ... is to have probed what is knowable and quietly to revere what is unknowable.
The public wishes itself to be managed like a woman; one must say nothing to it except what it likes to hear.
A king there was once reigning, Who had a goodly flea, Him loved he without feigning, As his own son were he!
Everyone believes in his youth that the world really began with him, and that all merely exists for his sake.
Treat people as if they were what they ought to be and you help them to become what they are capable of being.
Who is the most sensible person? The one who finds what is to their own advantage in all that happens to them.
All lyrical work must, as a whole, be perfectly intelligible, but in some particulars a little unintelligible.
Tolerance comes of age. I see no fault committed that I myself could not have committed at some time or other.
I always had an aversion to your apostles of freedom; each but sought for himself freedom to do what he liked.
There are only two lasting bequests we can hope to give our children. One of these is roots, the other, wings.
A state of true and universal tolerance is best ensured by leaving alone the peculiarities of men and peoples.
The important thing is not to know more than all men, but to know more at each moment than any particular man.
Seize this very minute. What you can do or dream you can do, begin it. Begin it and the work will be completed
We cannot fashion our children after our desires, we must have them and love them as God has given them to us.
I am certain that I have been here as I am now a thousand times before, and I hope to return a thousand times.
True works of art contain their own theory and give us the measurement according to which we should judge them.
And those whom once my song had cheered and gladdened, If still they live, rove through the world now saddened.
Our wishes are presentiments of the abilities that lie in us, harbingers of what we will be able to accomplish.
Tolerance should really be only a temporary attitude; it must lead to recognition. To tolerate means to offend.
It is the strange fate of man, that even in the greatest of evils the fear of the worst continues to haunt him.
Thou must (in commanding and winning, or serving and losing, suffering or triumphing) be either anvil or hammer.
The destiny of any nation at any given time depends on the opinion of its young people, those under twenty-five.
If you treat men the way they are you never improve them. If you treat them the way you want them to be, you do.
Whoever would do good in the world, ought not to deal in censure. We ought not to destroy, but rather construct.
I wish the stage were as narrow as the wire of a tighrope dancer so that no incompetent would dare step upon it.
To think is easy. To act is hard. But the hardest thing in the world is to act in accordance with your thinking.
Necessity is cruel, but it is the only test of inward strength. Every fool may live according to his own likings.
This is the highest wisdom that I own; freedom and life are earned by those alone who conquer them each day anew.
I have often reaped what others have sowed. My work is the work of a collective being that bears the name Goethe.