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.

Scientific knowledge helps us mainly because it makes the wonder to which we are called by nature rather more intelligible.
Maxims and Reflections (1833), Maxim 417, trans. Stopp
- Knowledge
- Science
Error is related to truth as sleeping is to waking. I have observed that when one has been in error, one turns to truth as though revitalized.
Maxims and Reflections (1833), Maxim 331, trans. Stopp
- Truth & Lies
There is no outward mark of politeness that does not have a profound moral reason. The right education would be that which taught the outward mark and the moral reason together.
Elective Affinities (1809), Bk. II, Ch. 5, R. J. Hollingdale, trans. (1971), p. 195
- Education
- Morality
Theories usually result from the precipitate reasoning of an impatient mind which would like to be rid of phenomena and replaces them with images, concepts, indeed often with mere words.
Maxims and Reflections (1833), Maxim 428, trans. Stopp
- Science
- Thinking
Love does not dominate, it cultivates. And that is more.
Das Märchen (1795), as translated by Hermann J. Weigand in Wisdom and Experience (1949)
- Love
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.
“Distichs” in The Poems of Goethe (1853) as translated in the original metres by Edgar Alfred Bowring
- Happiness
Though you’re a whole world, Rome, still, without Love,
The world isn’t the world, and Rome can’t be Rome.
Roman Elegies (1789), Elegy 1
- Love
Nothing should be treasured more highly than the value of the day.
Maxims and Reflections (1833), Maxim 789, trans. Stopp
- Time
A mathematician is only perfect insofar as he is a perfect man, sensitive to the beauty of truth.
Maxims and Reflections (1833), Maxim 609, trans. Stopp
- Beauty
- Science
A thinking man’s greatest happiness is to have fathomed what can be fathomed and to revere in silence what cannot be fathomed.
Maxims and Reflections (1833), Maxim 1207, trans. Stopp (p153)
- Happiness
- Thinking
Art is in itself noble; that is why the artist has no fear of what is common. This, indeed, is already ennobled when he takes it up.
Maxims and Reflections (1833), Maxim 61, trans. Stopp
- Art
I’ve studied now Philosophy
And Jurisprudence, Medicine,⁠—
And even, alas! Theology,⁠—
From end to end, with labor keen;
And here, poor fool! with all my lore
I stand, no wiser than before:
Faust (1808), Scene I, spoken by FaustIn context
- Knowledge
- Wisdom
What from your fathers’ heritage is lent,
Earn it anew, to really possess it!
Faust (1808), Scene I, spoken by FaustIn context
- Family
- Work
Two souls, alas! reside within my breast,
And each withdraws from, and repels, its brother.
Faust (1808), Scene II, spoken by FaustIn context
- Character
- Emotion
While Man’s desires and aspirations stir,
He cannot choose but err.
Faust (1808), Prologue in Heaven, spoken by The LordIn context
- Failure
- Motivation & Goals

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