Top 500 Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Quotes (2025 Update)
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301. “To live as one likes is plebian the noble man aspires to order and law.”

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

302. “The senses do not deceive us, but the judgment does.”

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

303. “Sometimes I don’t understand how another can love her, is allowed to love her, since I love her so completely myself, so intensely, so fully, grasp nothing, know nothing, have nothing but her!”

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

304. “All things are only transitory.”

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

305. “The clever reader who is capable or reading between these lines what does not stand written in them but is nevertheless implied will be able to form some conception.”

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

306. “Yet here I stand poor fool what more, not one wit wiser than before.”

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

307. “On all the peaks lies peace.”

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

308. “Nature knows no pause in progress and development, and attaches her curse on all inaction.”

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

309. “A world without love would be no world.”

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

310. “If you wish to know the mind of a man, listen to his words.”

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

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

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

312. “He who possesses art and science has religion; he who does not possess them, needs religion.”

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

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

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

314. “If in the infinite you want to stride, Just walk in the finite to every side.”

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

315. “The rich want good wine, the poor, plenty of wine.”

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

316. “Tolerance comes of age. I see no fault committed that I myself could not have committed at some time or other.”

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

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

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

318. “The destiny of any nation at any given time depends on the opinion of its young people, those under twenty-five.”

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

319. “When young, one is confident to be able to build palaces for mankind, but when the time comes one has one’s hands full just to be able to remove their trash.”

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

320. “The highest goal that man can achieve is amazement.”

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

321. “Music is either sacred or secular. The sacred agrees with its dignity, and here has its greatest effect on life, an effect that remains the same through all ages and epochs. Secular music should be cheerful throughout.”

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

322. “Higher yet and higher out of clouds and night, nearer yet and nearer rising to the light – light, serene and holy where my soul may rest, purified and lowly, sanctified and blest.”

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

323. “A phenomenon like Mozart remains an inexplicable thing.”

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

324. “How can we learn self-knowledge? Never by taking thought but rather by action. Try to do your duty and you’ll soon discover what you’re like.”

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

325. “For a brave man deserves a well-endowed girl.”

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

326. “Translators can be considered as busy matchmakers who praise as extremely desirable a half-veiled beauty. They arouse an irresistible yearning for the original.”

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

327. “I have found a paper of mine among some others in which I call architecture ‘petrified music.’ Really there is something in this; the tone of mind produced by architecture approaches the effect of music.”

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

328. “I always seek the good that is in people and leave the bad to Him who made mankind and knows how to round off the corners.”

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

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

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

330. “The heights charm us, but the steps do not; with the mountain in our view we love to walk the plains.”

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

331. “To create something you must be something.”

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

332. “Character develops itself in the stream of life.”

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

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

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

334. “I am fully convinced that the soul is indestructible, and its activity will continue through eternity.”

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

335. “The human mind will not be confined to any limits.”

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

336. “But who will dare to speak the truth out clear? The few who anything of truth have learned, And foolishly did not keep truth concealed, Their thoughts and visions to the common herd revealed, Since time began we’ve crucified and burned.”

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

337. “Hatred is a heavy burden. It sinks the heart deep in the breast, and lies like a tombstone on all joys.”

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

338. “I treat my heart like a sick child and gratify its every fancy.”

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

339. “Life teaches us to be less harsh with ourselves and with others.”

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

340. “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 or sword.”

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

341. “What you desire when young, you have in abundance when old.”

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

342. “Deeply earnest and thoughtful people stand on shaky footing with the public.”

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

343. “Nothing will change the fact that I cannot produce the least thing without absolute solitude.”

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

344. “It matters little whether a man be mathematically or philologically or artistically cultivated, so he be but cultivated.”

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

345. “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

346. “We usually lose today, because there has been a yesterday, and tomorrow is coming.”

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

347. “He who is and remains true to himself and to others has the most attractive quality of the greatest talent.”

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

348. “There is no permanence in doubt; it incites the mind to closer inquiry and experiment, from which, if rightly managed, certainty proceeds, and in this alone can man find thorough satisfaction.”

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

349. “In art, the best is good enough.”

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

350. “As in Rome there is, apart from the Romans, a population of statues, so apart from this real world there is a world of illusion, almost more potent, in which most men live.”

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe