Top 500 Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Quotes (2025 Update)
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251. “What I possess, seems far away to me, and what is gone becomes reality.”

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

252. “The history of science is science itself; the history of the individual, the individual.”

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

253. “By nature we have no defect that could not become a strength, no strength that could not become a defect.”

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

254. “Let’s plunge ourselves into the roar of time, the whirl of accident; may pain and pleasure, success and failure, shift as they will – it’s only action that can make a man.”

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

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

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

256. “Being brilliant is no great feat if you respect nothing.”

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

257. “The day is of infinite length for him who knows how to appreciate and use it.”

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

258. “Fresh activity is the only means of overcoming adversity.”

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

259. “We will burn that bridge when we come to it.”

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

260. “And we went our separate ways without having understood each other. As in this world nobody understands the other easily.”

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

261. “The soul is indestructible and its activity will continue through eternity. It is like the sun, which, to our eyes, seems to set at night; but it has in reality only gone to diffuse its light elsewhere.”

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

262. “Deny yourself! You must deny yourself! That is the song that never ends.”

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

263. “The older I get the more I trust in the law according to which the rose and the lily bloom.”

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

264. “Hatred is something peculiar. You will always find it strongest and most violent where there is the lowest degree of culture.”

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

265. “What we agree with leaves us inactive, but contradiction makes us productive.”

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

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

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

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

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

268. “Aptitudes are assumed, they should become accomplishments. That is the purpose of all education.”

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

269. “Always to distrust is an error, as well as always to trust.”

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

270. “Love, whose power youth feels, is not suitable for the elderly, just as little as anything that presupposes productivity. It is rare that productivity lasts through the years.”

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

271. “A creation of importance can only be produced when its author isolates himself, it is a child of solitude.”

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

272. “Be generous with kindly words, especially about those who are absent.”

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

273. “What one doesn’t understand one doesn’t possess.”

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

274. “If you inquire what people are like here, I must answer, “The same as everywhere.””

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

275. “Theories are usually the over-hasty efforts of an impatient understanding that would gladly be rid of phenomena, and so puts in their place pictures, notions, nay, often mere words.”

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

276. “If you’ve never eaten while crying you don t know what life tastes like.”

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

277. “A man’s shortcomings are taken from his epoch; his virtues and greatness belong to himself.”

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

278. “What you have inherited from your forefathers, it takes work to make it your own.”

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

279. “True love is love that stays constant for ever, whatever it’s fortune; whether requited or scored, filled or sent empty away.”

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

280. “Let us live, while we are alive!”

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

281. “I am certain that I have been here as I am now a thousand times before, and I hope to return a thousand times.”

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

282. “Out of moderation a pure happiness springs.”

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

283. “Death is Nature’s expert advice to get plenty of Life.”

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

284. “One lives but once in the world.”

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

285. “Man errs, till he has ceased to strive.”

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

286. “Man must strive, and striving he must err.”

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

287. “The sum which two married people owe to one another defies calculation. It is an infinite debt, which can only be discharged through all eternity.”

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

288. “Names are but noise and smoke, Obscuring heavenly light.”

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

289. “The present moment is a powerful goddess.”

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

290. “Whoever wishes to keep a secret must hide the fact that he possesses one.”

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

291. “Nature is beneficent. I praise her and all her works. She is silent and wise. She is cunning, but for good ends. She has brought me here and will also lead me away. She may scold me, but she will not hate her work. I trust her.”

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

292. “God help us – for art is long, and life so short.”

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

293. “If you are to accomplish all that one demands of you, you must overestimate your own worth.”

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

294. “And here, poor fool, with all my lore I stand no wiser than before.”

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

295. “What is uttered from the heart alone, Will win the hearts of others to your own.”

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

296. “Gray is the color of all theory.”

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

297. “If nature is your teacher, your soul will awaken.”

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

298. “In comradeship is danger countered best.”

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

299. “We can really respect a man only if he doesn’t always look out for himself.”

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

300. “Self knowledge is best learned not by contemplation, but by action.”

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe