Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832)

Quotes

• 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.

• If God had wanted me otherwise, He would have created me otherwise.

• I do not know everything; still many things I understand.

• There is nothing worse than aggressive stupidity.

• What you can do, or dream you can do, begin it;
  boldness has genius, power and magic in it.

• So divinely is the world organized that every one of us, in our place and time, is in balance with everything else.

• When you take a man as he is, you make him worse. When you take a man as he can be, you make him better.

• You will always find [hatred] strongest and most violent where there is the lowest degree of culture.

• Reason can never be popular. Passions and feelings may become popular, but reason will always remain the sole property of a few eminent individuals.

• If children grew up according to early indications, we should have nothing but geniuses.

• Treat a man as he appears to be, and you make him worse. But treat a man as if he were what he potentially could be, and you make him what he should be.

• The true, prescriptive artist strives after artistic truth; the lawless artist, following blind instinct, after an appearance of naturalness. The one leads to the highest peaks of art, the other to its lowest depths.

• Science arose from poetry--when times change the two can meet again on a higher level as friends.

• We must always change, renew, rejuvenate ourselves; otherwise we harden.

• Nothing is worse than active ignorance.

• The best is the deep quiet in which I live and grow against the world, and harvest what they cannot take from me by fire and sword.

• We only see what we know.

• Nothing is worth more than this day.

• Whatever you can do or dream, begin it.

• None are so hopelessly enslaved as those who falsely believe they are free.