Quotes by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

“If I love you, what business is it of yours?”

“Age does not make us childish, as some say; it finds us true children.”

“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 ...”

“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.”

“You must, in studying Nature, always consider both each single thing and the whole: nothing is inside and nothing is outside, for what is within is without. Make haste, then, to grasp this holy mys...”

“A dim vastness is spread before our souls; the perceptions of our mind are as obscure as those of our vision... But alas! when we have attained our object, when the distant 'there' becomes the pres...”

“You cant, if you cant feel it, if it neverRises from the soul, and swaysThe heart of every single hearer,With deepest power, in simple ways.Youll sit forever, gluing things together,Cooking up a st...”

“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.”

“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...”

“As soon as you trust yourself, you will know how to live.”

“If you've never eaten while crying you don t know what life tastes like.”

“There is nothing more frightful than ignorance in action.”

“Life belongs to the living, and he who lives must be prepared for changes.”

“...nothing is more dangerous than solitude: there our imagination, always disposed to rise, taking a new flight on the wings of fancy, pictures to us a chain of beings of whom we seem the most infe...”

“If you would create something,you must be something.”

“He who moves not forward, goes backward.”

“The greatest thing in this world is not so much where we stand as in what direction we are moving.”

“Be above it! Make the world serve your purpose, but do not serve it!”

“The heights charm us, but the steps do not; with the mountain in our view we love to walk the plains.”

“Love is an ideal thing, marriage a real thing.”