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
It is better to busy one's self about the smallest thing in the world than to treat a half hour as worthless
Trust yourself, then you will know how to live.
If society gives up the right to impose the death penalty, then self-help will appear again and personal vendettas will be around the corner.
Self-love exaggerates our faults as well as our virtues.
Whatever is the lot of humankind I want to taste within my deepest self. I want to seize the highest and the lowest, to load its woe and bliss upon my breast, and thus expand my single self titanically and in the end go down with all the rest.
If we examine every stage of our lives, we find that from our first breath to our last we are under the constraint of circumstances. And yet we still possess the greatest of all freedoms, the power of developing our innermost selves in harmony with the moral order of the universe, and so winning peace of heart whatever obstacles we meet.
To be loved for what one is, that is the greatest exception. The great majority love in others only what they lend him; their own selves, their version of him.
Know thyself? If I knew myself I would run away.
Self knowledge is best learned not by contemplation, but by action.
One is never satisfied with the portrait of a person that one knows.
A plant is like a self-willed man, out of whom we can obtain all which we desire, if we will only treat him his own way.
All ages have said and repeated that one should strive to know one's self. This is a strange demand which no one up to now has measured up to and, strictly considered, no one should. With all their study and effort, people are directed to what is outside, to the world about them, and they are kept busy coming to know this and to master it to the extent that their purposes require. . . . How can you come to know yourself? Never by thinking, always by doing. Try to do your duty, and you'll know right away what you amount to. And what is your duty? Whatever the day calls for.
The realization of the self is only possible if one is productive, if one can give birth to one's own potentialities.
Self-knowledge comes from knowing other men.