Top 500 Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Quotes (2025 Update)
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201. “To accept good advice is but to increase one’s own ability.”

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

202. “Everywhere, we learn only from those whom we love.”

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

203. “Without haste! without rest! Bind the motto to thy breast! Bear it with thee as a spell; Storm or sunshine, guard it well.”

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

204. “The nude is the perfect expression of freedom. Freedom to be.”

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

205. “When a wife has a good husband, it is easily seen on her face.”

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

206. “A person hears only what they understand.”

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

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

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

208. “Blood is a very special juice.”

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

209. “Look closely at those who patronize you. Half are unfeeling, half untaught.”

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

210. “Misunderstandings and neglect create more confusion in this world than trickery and malice. At any rate, the last two are certainly much less frequent.”

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

211. “Seize this very minute. What you can do or dream you can do, begin it. Begin it and the work will be completed.”

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

212. “It is said that no man is a hero to his valet. That is because a hero can be recognized only by a hero.”

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

213. “Great thoughts and a pure heart, that is what we should ask from God.”

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

214. “On every mountain height is rest.”

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

215. “Experience is only half of experience.”

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

216. “Life is the childhood of our immortality.”

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

217. “Art is long, life short, judgment difficult, opportunity transient. To act is easy, to think is hard; to act according to our thought is troublesome. Every beginning is cheerful: the threshold is the place of expectation.”

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

218. “We talk too much. We should talk less and draw more.”

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

219. “Be always resolute with the present hour. Every moment is of infinite value.”

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

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

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

221. “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.”

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

222. “There is no past we can bring back by longing for it. There is only an eternal now that builds and creates out of the past something new and better.”

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

223. “We know accurately only when we know little, with knowledge doubt increases.”

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

224. “Those that are firm in their will mold the world to themselves.”

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

225. “Classicism is health, romanticisim is sickness.”

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

226. “Were the eye not of the sun, How could we behold the light? If God’s might and ours were not as one, How could His work enchant our sight?”

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

227. “Excellence is rarely found, more rarely valued.”

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

228. “Good children’s literature appeals not only to the child in the adult, but to the adult in the child.”

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

229. “It is the color closest to light. In its utmost purity it always implies the nature of brightness and has a cheerful, serene, gently stimulating character. Hence, experience teaches us that yellow makes a thoroughly warm and comforting impression.”

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

230. “Night is the other half of life, and the better half.”

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

231. “Of all peoples the Greeks have dreamt the dream of life best.”

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

232. “Collectors are happy people.”

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

233. “For many people, one of the most frustrating aspects of life is not being able to understand other people’s behavior.”

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

234. “Too many parents make life hard for their children by trying, too zealously, to make it easy for them.”

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

235. “As long as you are not aware of the continual law of Die and Be Again, you are merely a vague guest on a dark Earth.”

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

236. “Cease endlessly striving for what you would like to do and learn to love what must be done.”

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

237. “Noble be man, helpful and good!”

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

238. “Kindness is the golden thread that holds society together.”

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

239. “Investigate what is, and not what pleases.”

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

240. “A noble soul alone can noble souls attract; And knows alone, as ye, to hold them.”

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

241. “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.”

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

242. “Mountains cannot be surmounted except by winding paths.”

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

243. “Love and desire are the spirit’s wings to great deeds.”

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

244. “Common sense is the genius of humanity.”

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

245. “Of all thieves, fools are the worst; they rob you of time and temper.”

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

246. “Properly speaking, such work is never finished; one must declare it so when, according to time and circumstances, one has done one’s best.”

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

247. “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.”

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

248. “Talents are nurtured best in solitude, But character on life’s tempestuous seas!”

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

249. “What is the path? There is no path. On into the unknown.”

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

250. “Against criticism a man can neither protest nor defend himself; he must act in spite of it, and then it will gradually yield to him.”

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe