Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Life Quotations

Character develops itself in the stream of life.

Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it.

What is not started today is never finished tomorrow.

What is important in life is life, and not the result of life.

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

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

He only earns his freedom and his life Who takes them every day by storm.

Thinking is easy, acting is difficult, and to put one's thoughts into action is the most difficult thing in the world.

Plunge boldly into the thick of life, and seize it where you will, it is always interesting.

This is the highest wisdom that I own; freedom and life are earned by those alone who conquer them each day anew.

It is not doing the thing we like to do, but liking the thing we have to do, that makes life blessed.

Love and desire are the spirit's wings to great deeds.

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

All theory, dear friend, is gray, but the golden tree of life springs ever green.

Girls we love for what they are; young men for what they promise to be.

Every author in some way portrays himself in his works, even if it be against his will.

What is my life if I am no longer useful to others.

There are nine requisites for contented living: HEALTH enough to make work a pleasure; WEALTH enough to support your needs; STRENGTH enough to battle with difficulties and forsake them; GRACE enough to confess your sins and overcome them; PATIENCE enough to toil until some good is accomplished; CHARITY enough to see some good in your neighbor; LOVE enough to move you to be useful and helpful to others; FAITH enough to make real the things of God; HOPE enough to remove all anxious fears concerning the future.

Life teaches us to be less harsh with ourselves than with others

Those are dead even for this life who hope for no other.

When we treat man as he is, we make him worse than he is; when we treat him as if he already were what he potentially could be, we make him what he should be.

Art is long, life short, judgment difficult, opportunity transient.

Impartiality is the life of justice, as justice is of all good government

Genius is formed in quiet, character in the stream of human life

Genius develops in quiet places, character out in the full current of human life

Daily life is more instructive than the most effective book.

Life teaches us to be less harsh with ourselves and with others.

Quite often, as life goes on, when we feel completely secure as we go on our way, we suddenly notice that we are trapped in error, that we have allowed ourselves to be taken in by individuals, by objects, have dreamt up an affinity with them which immediately vanishes before our waking eye; and yet we cannot tear ourselves away, held fast by some power that seems incomprehensible to us. Sometimes, however, we become fully aware and realize that error as well as truth can move and spur us on to action.

Love grants in a moment what toil can hardly acheive in an age.

One never goes so far as when one doesn't know where one is going.

Basic characteristics of an individual organism: to divide, to unite, to merge into the universal, to abide in the particular, to transform itself, to define itself, and as living things tend to appear under a thousand conditions, to arise and vanish, to solidify and melt, to freeze and flow, to expand and contract. Since these effects occur together, any or all may occur at the same moment.

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

Superstition is the poetry of life.

Deny yourself! You must deny yourself! That is the song that never ends.

The whole art of living consists in giving up existence in order to exist.

Life seems so vulgar, so easily content with the commonplace things of every day, and yet it always nurses and cherishes certain higher claims in secret, and looks about for the means of satisfying them.

There are but two roads that lead to an important goal and to the doing of great things: strength and perseverance. Strength is the lot of but a few privileged men; but austere perseverance, harsh and continuous, may be employed by the smallest of us and rarely fails of its purpose, for its silent power grows irresistibly greater with time.

Es irrt der Mensch, so lang er strebt. Man errs as long as he strives.

Viewed from the summit of reason, all life looks like a malignant disease and the world like a madhouse.

We lay aside letters never to read them again, and at last we destroy them out discretion, and so disappears the most immediate breath of life, irrecoverably for ourselves and for others.

We must not hope to be mowers, And to gather the ripe gold ears, Unless we have first been sowers And water the furrows with tears. It is not just as we take it, This mystical world of ours, Life's field will yield as we make it A harvest of thorns or of flowers.

And what does really matter? That is easy: thinking and doing, doing and thinking--and these are the sum of all wisdom. . . . Both must move ever onward in life, to and fro, like breathing in and breathing out.

Human life-everybody lives it, but only to a few is it known.

Art is long, life is short; judgement difficult, opportunity transient.

Man errs as long as he strives.

One lives but once in the world.

Everything that we encounter leaves traces behind. Everything contributes imperceptibly to our education

It is one of Heaven's best gifts to hold such a dear creature in one's arms.

Sing it not in mournful numbers.

My worthy friend, gray are all theories And green alone Life's golden tree.

The fine emotions whence our lives we mold Lie in the earthly tumult dumb and cold.

We cannot too soon convince ourselves how easily we may be dispensed with in the world. What important personages we imagine ourselves to be! We think that we alone are the life of the circle in which we move; in our absence, we fancy that life, existence, breath will come to a general pause, and, alas, the gap which we leave is scarcely perceptible, so quickly is it filled again; nay, it is often the place, if not of something better, at least for something more agreeable.

No man learns to know his inmost nature by introspection, for he rates himself sometimes too low, and often too high, by his own measurement. Man knows himself only by comparing himself with other men; it is life that touches his genuine worth.

I must consider more closely this cycle of good and bad days which I find coursing within myself. Passion, attachment, the urge to action, inventiveness, performance, order all alternate and keep their orbit; cheerfulness, vigor, energy, flexibility and fatigue, serenity as well as desire. Nothing disturbs the cycle for I lead a simple life, but I must still find the time and order in which I rotate.

Everything which is properly business we must keep carefully separate from life. Business requires earnestness and method; life must have a freed handling.

That is the way of youth and life in general: that we do not understand the strategy until after the campaign is over.

Enjoy when you can, and endure when you must.

From inaccessible mountain range by way of desert untrod by human foot to the ends of the unknown seas, the breath of the everlasting creative spirit is felt, rejoicing over every speck of dust that hearkens to it and lives.

Love is an ideal thing, marriage a real thing

Love is an ideal thing, marriage a real thing; a confusion of the real with the ideal never goes unpunished.

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

Rest not. Life is sweeping by; go and dare before you die. Something mighty and sublime, leave behind to conquer time.

A useless life is an early death.

Life is the childhood of our immortality.

People of uncommon abilities generally fall into eccentricities when their sphere of life is not adequate to their abilities.

Nine requisites for contented living: Health enough to make work a pleasure. Wealth enough to support your needs. Strength to battle with difficulties and overcome them. Grace enough to confess your sins and forsake them. Patience enough to toil until some good is accomplished. Charity enough to see some good in your neighbor. Love enough to move you to be useful and helpful to others. Faith enough to make real the things of God. Hope enough to remove all anxious fears concerning the future.

A useless life is an early death. [Ger., Ein unnutz Leben ist ein fruher Tod.]