Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Johann WolfgangGoethetə/; German: ; 28 August 1749 – 22 March 1832) was a German writer and statesman. His body of work includes epic and lyric poetry written in a variety of metres and styles; prose and verse dramas; memoirs; an autobiography; literary and aesthetic criticism; treatises on botany, anatomy, and colour; and four novels. In addition, numerous literary and scientific fragments, more than 10,000 letters, and nearly 3,000 drawings by him exist...
NationalityGerman
ProfessionPoet
Date of Birth28 August 1749
CountryGermany
Doubt can only be removed by action.
The really unhappy person is the one who leaves undone what they can do, and starts doing what they don't understand; no wonder they come to grief.
Only by joy and sorrow does a person know anything about themselves and their destiny. They learn what to do and what to avoid.
If your treat an individual... as if he were what he ought to be and could be, he will become what he ought to be and could be.
Human life runs its course in the metamorphosis between receiving and giving.
Love does not dominate; it cultivates.
The best slave is the one who thinks he is free.
Too many parents make life hard for their children by trying, too zealously, to make it easy for them.
Who is the wisest man? He who neither knows or wishes for anything else than what happens.
He who possesses art and science has religion; he who does not possess them, needs religion.
Whenever I hear people talking about liberal ideas, I am always astounded that men should love to fool themselves with empty sounds. An idea should never be liberal; it must be vigorous, positive, and without loose ends so that it may fulfill its divine mission and be productive.
Children, like dogs, have so sharp and fine a scent that they detect and hunt out everything--the bad before all the rest. They also know well enough how this or that friend stands with their parents; and as they practice no dissimulation whatever, they serve as excellent barometers by which to observe the degree of favor or disfavor at which we stand with their parents.
Divide and rule, a sound motto. Unite and lead, a better one.
Life is the childhood of our immortality.