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
If you accept people for what they are, they will become worse. Treat them like they should be, and they will become better.
If you have any faith, give me, for heaven's sake, a share of it! Your doubts you may keep to yourself, for I have a plenty of my own
Human beings, by change, renew, rejuvenate ourselves; otherwise we harden.
Genius is formed in quiet, character in the stream of human life
Genius develops in quiet places, character out in the full current of human life
When a wife has a good husband it is easily seen in her face.
Why do we hear such everlasting negative talk! People all imagine they'll be giving something away if they recognize the least bit of merit.
To be loved for what one is, is the greatest exception. The great majority love in others only what they lend him, their own selves, their version of him.
Trust yourself, then you will know how to live.
We always have time enough, if we will but use it aright.
The phrases men are accustomed to repeat incessantly, end by becoming convictions and ossify the organs of intelligence
The philosopher must station themselves in the middle.
When we treat man as he is, we make him worse than he is; when we treat him as if he already were what he potentially could be, we make him what he should be.
We lay aside letters never to read them again, and at last we destroy them out of discretion, and so disappears the most beautiful, the most immediate breath of life, irrecoverable for ourselves and for others.