Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Able Quotations

Treat people as if they were what they ought to be, and you help them to become what they are capable of being

Treat a man as if he were what he ought to be and you help him become what he is capable of being

A man's errors are what make him amiable.

One must be something to be able to do something.

A man's foibles are what makes him lovable.

All poetry is supposed to be instructive but in an unnoticeable manner; it is supposed to make us aware of what it would be valuable to instruct ourselves in; we must deduce the lesson on our own, just as with life.

There is no crime of which I do not deem myself capable.

For many people, one of the most frustrating aspects of life is not being able to understand other people's behavior.

If I accept you as you are, I will make you worse; however if I treat you as though you are what you are capable of becoming, I help you become that

One ought every day at least, to hear a little song, read a good poem, see a fine picture, and, if it were possible, to speak a few reasonable words

One ought, every day at least, to hear a little song, read a good poem, see a fine picture and, if possible, speak a few reasonable words

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

Only people unable to produce anything themselves feel there is nothing there.

A phenomenon like Mozart remains an inexplicable thing.

Higher aims are in themselves more valuable, even if unfulfilled, than lower ones quite attained.

Our foibles are really what make us lovable.

There are but few who have ideas and are, at the same time, capable of action. Ideas enlarge but stymie, action enlivens but confines.

Great passions are incurable diseases.

The further one advances in experience, the closer one comes to the unfathomable; the more one learns to utilize experience, the more one recognizes that the unfathomable is of no practical value.

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.

All of us, just because we are able to talk, also believe we are able to talk about language.

Our wishes are presentiments of the abilities that lie in us, harbingers of what we will be able to accomplish.