"Sameness leaves us in peace but it is contradiction that makes us productive."
Read quote
4 likes
Quote collection
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe quotes (page 56 of 88)
1.7K quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"I hate all bungling as I do sin, but particularly bungling in politics, which leads to the misery and ruin of many thousands and millions of people."
Read quote
4 likes
"When you praise someone you call yourself his equal."
Read quote
4 likes
"It is the fortunate who should extol fortune. [Ger., Das Gluck erhebe billig der Begluckte.]"
Read quote
4 likes
"Every day look at a beautiful picture, read a beautiful poem, listen to some beautiful music, and if possible, say some reasonable thing."
Read quote
4 likes
"But who will dare to speak the truth out clear? The few who anything of truth have learned, And foolishly did not keep truth concealed, Their thoughts and visions to the common herd revealed, Since time began we've crucified and burned"
Read quote
4 likes
"If a man knows where to get good advice, it is as though he could supply it himself."
Read quote
4 likes
"To quit smoking, you must first want to quit, but then you must also do the quitting"
Read quote
4 likes
"There is no patriotic art and no patriotic science."
Read quote
4 likes
"It is a great error to take oneself for more than one is, or for less than one is worth."
Read quote
4 likes
"In all things, to serve from the lowest station upwards is necessary. To restrict yourself to a trade is best. For the narrow mind, whatever he attempts is still a trade; for the higher, an art; and the highest in doing one thing does all, or, to speak less paradoxically, in the one thing which he does rightly he sees the likeness of all that is done rightly."
Read quote
4 likes
"People can only live with their equals, and not even with them; for in the long run they cannot tolerate that someone is their equal."
Read quote
4 likes
"Our modern wars make many unhappy while they last and none happy when they are over."
Read quote
4 likes
"The most happy man is he who knows how to bring into relation the end and beginning of his life."
Read quote
4 likes
"Everyone only hears what he understands."
Read quote
4 likes
"I examine my own being, and find there a world, but a world rather of imagination and dim desires, than of distinctness and living power. Then everything swims before my senses, and I smile and dream while pursuing my way through the world."
Read quote
4 likes
"One is led astray alike by sympathy and coldness, by praise and by blame"
Read quote
4 likes
"In all times it is only individuals that have advanced science, not the age."
Read quote
4 likes
"The history of knowledge is a great fugue in which the voices of the nations one after the other emerge."
Read quote
4 likes
"All theory, my friend, is grey, But green is life's glad golden tree."
Read quote
4 likes