The quotations of

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

German writer, artist, natural scientist and politician

1749–1832

60 quotes, most often on Love, Art and Talking. Part of the Poets collection.

As soon as you trust yourself, you will know how to live.
Everything is simpler than you think and at the same time more complex than you imagine.
There is nothing more dreadful than imagination without taste.
- Art
A man can stand anything except a succession of ordinary days.
To be pleased with one’s limits is a wretched state.
- Motivation & Goals
Everything in the world may be endured except continued prosperity.
Music, in the best sense, does not require novelty; no, the older it is, and the more we are accustomed to it, the greater its effect.
- Music
None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free.
Elective Affinities (1809), Bk. II, Ch. 5
- Freedom
When young, one is confident to be able to build palaces for mankind, but when the time comes one has one’s hands full just to be able to remove their trash.
Letter to Johann Kaspar Lavatar (6 March 1780)
- Experience
- Youth
A useless life is an early death.
Iphigenie auf Tauris (1787)
- Life & Death
The Eternal Feminine draws us on.
Faust, Part 2 (1832), Act V, Heaven, last line
- Women
The deed is everything, the glory nothing.
Faust, Part 2 (1832), Act IV, A High Mountain Range
- Fame
There is strong shadow where there is much light.
Götz von Berlichingen, Act I (1773)
What is Classical is healthy; what is Romantic is sick.
Maxims and Reflections (1833), Maxim 1031, trans. Stopp
- Art
The first and last thing demanded of genius is love of truth.
Maxims and Reflections (1833), Maxim 382, trans. Stopp
- Genius
- Truth & Lies

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