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Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Quotes - Page 9

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

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

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Learning, Men, Understanding

Enjoy when you can, and endure when you must.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Life, Witty, Clever

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

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Thinking, Easy, Threshold
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Thomas Carlyle, Henry Duff Traill (1824). “Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship and Travels”, p.75

The highest cannot be spoken; it can only be acted.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Action, Highest

The iron hand of necessity commands, and her stern decree is supreme law, to which the gods even must submit. In deep silence rules the uncounselled sister of eternal fate. Whatever she lays upon thee, endure; perform whatever she commands.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Fate, Hands, Law

Ingratitude is always a kind of weakness. I have never known men of ability to be ungrateful.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Men, Ungrateful, Weakness
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (2015). “Maxims and Reflections”, p.82, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

If one has not read the newspapers for some months and then reads them all together, one sees, as one never saw before, how much time is wasted with this kind of literature.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Philosophical, Thought Provoking, Together
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (2013). “Delphi Works of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (Illustrated)”, p.3573, Delphi Classics

Wealth and speed are what the world admires, what each pursues. Railways, express mails, steamships and every possible facility for communications are the achievement in which the civilized world view and revels, only to languish in mediocrity by that very fact. Indeed, the effect of this diffusion is to spread the culture of the mediocre.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Communication, Views, Achievement
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1963). “Goethe's world view: presented in his reflections and maxims”

Being brilliant is no great feat if you respect nothing.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Respect, Attitude, Literature

No doubt you are right... there would be far less suffering amongst mankind if men... did not employ their imaginations so assiduously in recalling the memory of past sorrow, instead of bearing their present lot with equanimity.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Memories, Past, Men
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (2006). “The Sorrows of Young Werther”, p.1, Mondial

Our passions are the true phoenixes; when the old one is burnt out, a new one rises from its ashes.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Passion, Phoenix, Ashes

I am not omniscient, but I know a lot.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Mephistopheles, Omniscient, Knows
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, David Luke (1998). “Faust”, p.49, Oxford University Press, USA

When translating one must proceed up to the intranslatable; only then one becomes aware of the foreign nation and the foreign tongue.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Tongue, Language, Translate

Progress has not followed a straight ascending line, but a spiral with rhythms of progress and retrogression, of evolution and dissolution.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Growth, Progress, Lines

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

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Thinking, People, Trying

People should talk less and draw more. Personally, I would like to renounce speech altogether and, like organic nature, communicate everything I have to say visually.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Nature, People, Listening

The intelligent man finds almost everything ridiculous, the sensible man hardly anything.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Clever, Drinking, Men
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, W. B. Rönnfeldt (1898*). “Goethe's Criticisms, Reflections, and Maxims”

Willing is not enough, we must do.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Wise, Wisdom, Enough

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.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Respect, Men, Thinking
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (18??). “The Works of J. W. Von Goethe”

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

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Wise, Wisdom, Men

The more one knows, the more one comprehends, the more one realizes that everything turns in a circle.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Circles, Realizing, Turns

We all walk in mysteries. We are surrounded by an atmosphere about which we still know nothing at all.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Atmosphere, Mystery, Walks

Live dangerously and you live right.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Life, Success, Insightful
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Carlyle Ferren MacIntyre (1957). “Goethe's Faust, Part 1: New American Version”, p.125, New Directions Publishing

Colors are the deeds/ and sufferings of light.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Art, Light, Color

We are our own devils; we drive ourselves out of our Edens.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Eden, Heaven, Devil

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