Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Quotes

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"How can we know ourselves? Never by reflection, but only through action. Begin at once to do your duty and immediately you will know what is inside you."

"Love can do much, but duty more."

"People of uncommon abilities generally fall into eccentricities when their sphere of life is not adequate to their abilities."

"He who does not think much of himself is much more esteemed than he imagines."

"Mastery passes often for egotism."

"Certain defects are necessary for the existence of individuality."

"It is the strange fate of man, that even in the greatest of evils the fear of the worst continues to haunt him."

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

"Look closely at those who patronize you. Half are unfeeling, half untaught."

"Don't dissipate your powers; strive to concentrate them. Genius thinks it can do whatever it sees others doing, but it will surely repent of every ill-judged outlay."

"It seems to never occur to fools that merit and good fortune are closely united."

"If a good person does you wrong, act as though you had not noticed it. They will make note of this and not remain in your debt long."

"Freedom consists not in refusing to recognize anything above us, but in respecting something which is above us; for by respecting it, we raise ourselves to it, and, by our very acknowledgment, prove that we bear within ourselves what is higher, and are worthy to be on a level with it"

"What by a straight path cannot be reached by crooked ways is never won."

"Progress has not followed a straight ascending line, but a spiral with rhythms of progress and retrogression, of evolution and dissolution."

"The phrases that men hear or repeat continually, end by becoming convictions and ossify the organs of intelligence."

"A person is never happy till their vague strivings has itself marked out its proper limitations."

"Happiness is a ball after which we run wherever it rolls, and we push it with our feet when it stops."

"The highest happiness of man is to have probed what is knowable and quietly to revere what is unknowable."

"Hatred is active, and envy passive dislike; there is but one step from envy to hate."