Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Thinking Quotations

To act is easy, to think is hard; to act according to our thought is troublesome.

To act is easy; to think is hard.

All ages have said and repeated that one should strive to know one's self. This is a strange demand which no one up to now has measured up to and, strictly considered, no one should. With all their study and effort, people are directed to what is outside, to the world about them, and they are kept busy coming to know this and to master it to the extent that their purposes require. . . . How can you come to know yourself? Never by thinking, always by doing. Try to do your duty, and you'll know right away what you amount to. And what is your duty? Whatever the day calls for.

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.

True observers of nature, although they may think differently, will still agree that everything that is, everything that is observable as a phenomenon, can only exhibit itself in one of two ways. It is either a primal polarity that is able to unify, or it is a primal unity that is able to divide. The operation of nature consists of splitting the united or uniting the divided; this is the eternal movement of systole and diastole of the heartbeat, the inhalation and exhalation of the world in which we live, act, and exist.

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.

Whatever we think out, whatever we take in hand to do, should be perfectly and finally finished, that the world, if it must alter, will only have to spoil it; we have then nothing to do but unite the severed, to recollect and restore the dismembered.

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

Do people conform to the instructions of us old ones? Each thinks he must know best about himself, and thus many are lost entirely.

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

Secrecy has many advantages, for when you tell someone the purpose of any object right away, they often think there is nothing to it.

The rainbow mirrors human aims and action. Think, and more clearly wilt thou grasp it, seeing Life is but light in many-hued reflection.

Everything has been thought of before, but the problem is to think of it again.

The worst is that the very hardest thinking will not bring thoughts. They must come like good children of God and cry, "Here we are." You expend effort and energy thinking hard. Then, after you have given up, they come sauntering in with their hands in their pockets. If the effort had not been made to open the door, however, who knows when they could have come.

He who does not think much of himself is much more esteemed than he imagines.

Because everyone uses language to talk, everyone thinks he can talk about language.

Where a man has a passion for meditating without the capacity of thinking, a particular idea fixes itself fast, and soon creates a mental disease.

One that does not think to highly of himself is more than he thinks.

What must the English and French think of the language of our philosophers when we Germans do not understand it ourselves?

Happy contractedness of youth, nay, of mankind in general, that they think neither of the high nor the deep, of the true nor the false, but only of what is suited to their own conceptions.

There is a great difference, whether the poet seeks the particular for the sake of the general or sees the general in the particular. From the former procedure there ensues allegory, in which the particular serves only as illustration, as example of the general. The latter procedure, however, is genuinely the nature of poetry; it expresses something particular, without thinking of the general or pointing to it.

Nothing is more odious than the majority, for it consists of a few powerful leaders, a certain number of accommodating scoundrels and submissive weaklings, and a mass of men who trot after them without thinking, or knowing their own minds.

Analysis and synthesis are both as necessary to the thinking spirit as inspiration and expiration to the organism.

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.

Superstition belongs to the essence of mankind and takes refuge, when one thinks one has suppressed it completely, in the strangest nooks and crannies; once it is safely ensconced there, it suddenly reappears.

It doesn't behoove elderly persons to follow fashion in their thinking nor in the way they dress.

One usually thinks people to be more dangerous than they are.

What matters in art is not thinking but making.

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

Don't dissipate your powers; strive to concentrate them. Genius thinks it can do whatever it sees others doing, but it will surely repent of every ill-judged outlay.

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

If we meet someone who owes us a debt of gratitude, we remember the fact at once. How often we can meet someone to whom we owe a debt of gratitude without thinking about it at all!

We're only really thinking when we can't think out fully what we are really thinking about!

I think that I am better than the people who are trying to reform me.

In art it's not the thinking that does the job, but making.

The thinking person has the strange characteristic to like to create a fantasy in the place of the unsolved problem, a fantasy that stays with the person even when the problem has been solved and truth made its appearance.

There is nothing worth thinking but it has been thought before; we must only try to think it again.

The greatest happiness for the thinking person is to have explored the explorable and to venerate in equanimity that which cannotbe explored.

Normally, people believe that, if they hear just words, that these words must lead to some thought.

The bad thing is that thinking about thought doesn't help at all; one has to have it from nature so that the good ideas appear before us like free children of God calling to us: Here we are.

Don't feel guilty if you don't immediately love your stepchildren as you do your own, or as much as you think you should. Everyoneneeds time to adjust to the new family, adults included. There is no such thing as an "instant parent." Actually, no concrete object lies outside of the poetic sphere as long as the poet knows how to use the object properly.

The greatest joy of a thinking man is to have searched the explored and to quietly revere the unexplored.

Man usually believes, if only words he hears, That also with them goes material for thinking. [Ger., Gewohnlich glaubt der Mensch, wenn er nur Worte hort, Es musse sich dabei doch auch was denken.]

Who can think wise or stupid things at all that were not thought already in the past. [Ger., Wer kann was Dummes, wer was Kluges denken, Das nicht die Vorwelt schon gedacht.]

Superstition is the poetry of life. It is inherent in man's nature; and when we think it is wholly eradicated, it takes refuge in the strangest holes and corners, whence it peeps out all at once, as soon as it can do it with safety.

Lose the day loitering, 'twill be the same story To-morrow, and the next more dilatory, For indecision brings its own delays, And days are lost lamenting o'er lost days. Are you in earnest? Seize this very minute! What you can do, or think you can, begin it! Only engage, and then the mind grows heated; Begin it, and the work will be completed.

If you start to think of your physical and moral condition, you usually find that you are sick.

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

Thinking is more interesting than knowing, but less interesting than looking.

What you can do, or think you can, begin it.

A flippant, frivolous man may ridicule others, may controvert them, scorn them; but he who has any respect for himself seems to have renounced the right of thinking meanly of others.

Each indecision brings its own delays and days are lost lamenting over lost days... What you can do or think you can do, begin it. For boldness has magic, power, and genius in it.

All intelligent thoughts have already been thought; what is necessary is only to try to think them again.

Everything is simpler than you think and at the same time more complex than you imagine

How can you come to know yourself? Never by thinking, always by doing. Try to do your duty, and you'll know right away what you amount to.

The greatest evil that can befall man is that he should come to think ill of himself.

To think is easy. To act is difficult. To act as one thinks is the most difficult.

No prudent antagonist thinks light of his adversaries.

The best slave is the one who thinks he is free.

All truly wise thoughts have been thoughts already thousands of times; but to make them truly ours, we must think them over again honestly, till they take root in our personal experience.