Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Men Quotations

Ignorant men raise questions that wise men answered a thousand years ago.

The most happy man is he who knows how to bring into relation the end and beginning of his life.

To the person with a firm purpose all men and things are servants.

The man with insight enough to admit his limitations comes nearest to perfection.

A man's manners are a mirror in which he shows his portrait.

If you wish to know the mind of a man, listen to his words.

The man who occupies the first place seldom plays the principal part.

What life half gives a man, posterity gives entirely.

Death is a commingling of eternity with time; in the death of a good man, eternity is seen looking through time.

For a man to achieve all that is demanded of him he must regard himself as greater than he is.

The right man is the one who seizes the moment.

Who is the wisest man? He who neither knows or wishes for anything else than what happens.

Wood burns because it has the proper stuff in it; and a man becomes famous because he has the proper stuff in him.

Men show their character in nothing more clearly than by what they think laughable.

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

I respect the man who knows distinctly what he wishes. The greater part of all mischief in the world arises from the fact that men do not sufficiently understand their own aims. They have undertaken to build a tower, and spend no more labor on the foundation than would be necessary to erect a hut.

The phrases men are accustomed to repeat incessantly, end by becoming convictions and ossify the organs of intelligence

The destiny of any nation at any given time depends on the opinions of its young men under five-and-twenty

It is natural to man to regard himself as the object of the creation, and to think of all things in relation to himself, and the degree in which they can serve and be useful to him.

It matters little whether a man be mathematically or philologically or artistically cultivated, so he be but cultivated.

Reasonable men are the best dictionaries of conversation.

Man cannot persist long in a conscious state, he must throw himself back into the unconscious, for his root lives there.

Man believes himself always greater than he is, and is esteemed less than he is worth.

A man's errors are what make him amiable.

There are men who never err, because they never propose anything rational.

Man supposes that he directs his life and governs his actions, when his existence is irretrievably under the control of destiny

The man who acts never has any conscience; no one has any conscience but the man who thinks

A vain man can never be utterly ruthless: he wants to win applause and therefore he accommodates himself to others

In all times it is only individuals that have advanced science, not the age.

Beware of a man of one book.

All professional men are handicapped by not being allowed to ignore things which are useless.

He is a man whom it is impossible to please, because he is never pleased with himself.

A man would create another man if one did not already exist, but a woman might live an eternity without even thinking of reproducing her own sex.

The art of governing is a great metier, requiring the whole man, and it is therefore not well for a ruler to have too strong tendencies for other affairs.

Man's restlessness makes him strive.

Poetry is the universal possession of mankind, revealing itself everywhere, and at all times, in hundreds and hundreds of men.

The few of understanding, vision rare, Who veiled not from the herd their hearts, but tried, Poor generous fools, to lay their feelings bare, Them have men always burnt and crucified.

A wife is a gift bestowed upon a man to reconcile him to the loss of paradise.

A noble man is led by woman's gentle words.

It is natural to man to regard himself as the final cause of creation.

There speaks the man of truly noble ways, Who will not listen to the words of praise. In modesty averse, and with deaf ears, He acts as though the others were his peers.

The most fortunate of men, Be he a king or commoner, is he Whose welfare is assured in his own home.

A man's foibles are what makes him lovable.

Man must strive, and striving he must err.

If you treat men the way they are you never improve them. If you treat them the way you want them to be, you do.

Men are much more apt to agree in what they do than in what they think.

The little man is still a man.

Wind is the loving Wooer of waters; Wind blends together Billows all-foaming. Spirit of man, Thou art like unto water! Fortune of man, Thou art like unto wind!

The man who masters himself is delivered from the force that binds all creatures.

A mathematician is only perfect insofar as he is a perfect man, sensitive to the beauty of truth.

Men's prejudices rest upon their character for the time being and cannot be overcome, as being part and parcel of themselves. Neither evidence nor common sense nor reason has the slightest influence upon them.

Noble be man, helpful and good!

Fools and wise men are equally harmless. It is the half-fools and half-wise that are dangerous.

Nothing tells more about the character of a man than the things he makes fun of.

The greatest piece of folly is that every man thinks himself compelled to hand down what people think they have known.

What a man does not understand, he does not possess.

Habit is a man's sole comfort. We dislike doing without even unpleasant things to which we have become accustomed.

All men would be masters of others, and no man is lord of himself.

Energy will do anything that can be done in the world; and no talents, no circumstances, no opportunities will make a two-legged animal a man without it.

He is the happiest man who can see the connection between the end and the beginning of life.

If man thinks about his physical or moral state he usually discovers that he is ill.

The greatest act of faith takes place when a man finally decides that he is not God.

A man doesn't learn to understand anything unless he loves it.

Whether one show one's self a man of genius in science or compose a song, the only point is, whether the thought, the discovery, the deed, is living and can live on.

There is no permanence in doubt; it incites the mind to closer inquiry and experiment, from which, if rightly managed, certainty proceeds, and in this alone can man find thorough satisfaction.

Someday someone will write a pathology of experimental physics and bring to light all those swindles which subvert our reason, beguile our judgement and, what is worse, stand in the way of any practical progress. The phenomena must be freed once and for all from their grim torture chamber of empiricism, mechanism, and dogmatism; they must be brought before the jury of man's common sense.

I respect the man who knows distinctly what he wants.

Man's highest merit always is, as much as possible, to rule external circumstances and as little as possible to let himself be ruled by them.

Wherever a man may happen to turn, whatever a man may undertake, he will always end up by returning to that path which nature has marked out for him.

What is the destiny of man, but to fill up the measure of his sufferings, and to drink his allotted cup of bitterness?

If there is confusion in your head and in your heart, what more do you want! A man who no longer loves and no longer errs should have himself buried straight away.

Does not man lack the force at the very point where he needs it most? And when he soars upward in joy, or sinks down in suffering, is not checked in both, is he not returned again to the dull, cold sphere of awareness, just when he was longing to lose himself in the fullness of the infinite.

Man is not born to solve the problem of the universe, but to find out what he has to do; and to restrain himself within the limits of his comprehension.

Is this the destiny of man? Is he only happy before he has acquired his reason or after he has lost it?

It is in vain that a man of sound mind and cool temper understands the condition of such a wretched being... He can no more communicate his own wisdom to him than a healthy man can instil his strength into the invalid by whose bedside he is seated.

The suffering may be moral or physical; and in my opinion it is just as absurd to call a man a coward who destroys himself, as to call a man a coward who dies of a malignant fever.

The world runs on from one folly to another; and the man who, solely from regard to the opinion of others, and without any wish or necessity of his own, toils after gold, honour, or any other phantom, is no better than a fool.

Beware of her fair hair, for she excels All women in the magic of her locks; And when she winds them round a young man's neck, She will not ever set him free again.

The affairs of the world are no more than so much trickery, and a man who toils for money or honour or whatever else in deference to the wishes of others, rather than because his own desire or needs lead him to do so, will always be a fool.

The finished man, you know, is difficult to please; a growing mind will ever show you gratitude. --Faust 1, lines 182-3

Say what you will of fortitude, but show me the man who can patiently endure the laughter of fools when they have obtained an advantage over him. 'Tis only when their nonsense is without foundation that one can suffer it without complaint.

The greater part of all the mischief in the world arises from the fact that men do not sufficiently understand their own aims.

The highest goal that man can achieve is amazement.

Noble be man, Helpful and good! For that alone Sets him apart From every other creature On earth.

The history of a man is in his character.

The happiest man is the one who finds happiness at home.

The modern age has a false sense of superiority, because of the great mass of data at its disposal. But the valid criterion of distinction is rather the extent to which man knows how to form and master the material at his command.

The old lose one of the greatest privileges of man, for they are no longer judged by their contemporaries.

Sound and sufficient reason falls, after all, to the share of but few men, and those few men exert their influence in silence.

The theater has often been at variance with the pulpit; they ought not to quarrel. How much is it to be wished that in both the celebration of nature and of God were intrusted to none but men of noble minds.

The world sees only the reflection of merit; therefore when you come to know a really great man intimately, you may as often find him above as below his reputation.

When we see the many grave-stones which have fallen in, which have been defaced by the footsteps of the congregation, which lie buried under the ruins of the churches, that have themselves crumbled together over them; we may fancy the life after death to be as a second life, into which man enters in the figure, or the picture or the inscription, and lives longer there than when he was really alive. But this figure also, this second existence, dies out too, sooner or later. Time will not allow himself to be cheated of his rights with the monuments of men or with themselves.

To a valet no man is a hero. [Ger., Es gibt fur den Kammerdiener keiner Helden.]

Nobody, they say, is a hero to his valet. Of course; for a man must be a hero to understand a hero. The valet, I dare say, has great respect for some person of his own stamp.

Wood burns because it has the proper stuff for that purpose in it; and a man becomes renowned because he has the necessary stuff in him. Renown is not to be sought, and all pursuit of it is vain. A person may, indeed, by skillful conduct and various artificial means, make a sort of name for himself; but if the inner jewel is wanting, all is vanity, and will not last a day.

Age childish makes, they say, but 'tis not true; We're only genuine children still in Age's season. [Ger., Das Alter macht nicht kindisch, wie man spricht, Es findet uns nur noch als wahre Kinder.]

The soul of man is like to water; from Heaven it cometh, to Heaven it riseth And then returning to earth, forever alternating.

A man avails himself of the truth so long as it is serviceable; but he seizes on what is false with a passionate eloquence as soon as he can make a momentary use of it.

The longer I live, the more it grieves me to see man, who occupies his supreme place for the very purpose of imposing his will upon nature, and freeing himself and his from an outrageous necessity--to see him taken up with some false notion, and doing just the opposite of what he wants to do; and then, because the whole bent of his mind is spoilt, bungling miserably over everything.

A man must cling to the belief that the incomprehensible is comprehensible; otherwise he would not try to fathom it.