Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Hast du einen Menschen gern, so musst du ihn versteh\'n. Musst nicht immer hier und da, seine Fehler seh\'n. Schau mit Liebe und Verzeih\', denn am Ende bist du selbst nicht fehlerfrei.

Wo Recht zu Unrecht wird, wird Widerstand zur Pflicht.

Wer Tiere quält, ist unbeseelt und Gottes guter Geist ihm fehlt, mag noch so vornehm drein er schaun, man sollte niemals ihm vertraun.

Gerne der Zeiten gedenk\' ich, da alle Glieder gelenkig - bis auf eins. Doch die Zeiten sind vorüber, steif geworden alle Glieder - bis auf eins.'

Yes, I have finally arrived to this Capital of the World! I now see all the dreams of my youth coming to life... Only in Rome is it possible to understand Rome.

Like the star that shines afar, Without haste and without rest, Let each one wheel with steady sway Round the task that rules the day, And do their best.

Let your trouble be Light will follow dark Though the heaven falls You may hear the lark.

Beware of a man of one book.

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.

Our destiny often looks like a fruit-tree in winter. Who would think from its pitiable aspect that those rigid boughs, those rough twigs could next spring again be green, bloom, and even bear fruit? Yet we hope it, we know it.

Whatever we may say against collections, which present authors in a disjointed form, they nevertheless bring about many excellent results. We are not always so composed, so full of wisdom, that we are able to take in at once the whole scope of a work according to its merits. Do we not mark in a book passages which seem to have a direct reference to ourselves? Young people especially, who have failed in acquiring a complete cultivation of mind, are roused in a praiseworthy way by brilliant passages...

So dear night the half of life is, And the fairest half indeed.

The world of empirical morality consists for the most part of nothing but ill will and envy.

The mark of highest originality lies in the ability to develop a familiar idea so fruitfully that it would seem no one else would ever have discovered so much to be hidden in it.

What you have inherited from your fathers, earn over again for yourselves, or it will not be yours.

Everything which is properly business we must keep carefully separate from life. Business requires earnestness and method; life must have a freed handling.

A man's name is not like a mantle which merely hangs about him...but a perfectly fitting garment, which, like the skin, has grown over him, at which one cannot rake and scrape without injuring the man himself.

Insofar as he makes use of his healthy senses, man himself is the best and most exact scientific instrument possible. The greatest misfortune of modern physics is that its experiments have been set apart from man, as it were, physics refuses to recognize nature in anything not shown by artificial instruments, and even uses this as a measure of its accomplishments.

It is with art as with love: How can a man of the world,with all his distractions, keep the inwardness which an artist must possess if he hopes to attain perfection? That inwardness which the spectator must share if he is to understand the work as the artist wishes and hopes... Believe me, talents are like virtues; either you must love them for their own sake or renounce them altogether. And they are only recognized and rewarded when we have practised them in secret, like a dangerous mystery.\'

Win for yourself that which your fathers have won.

Most pioneers are at the mercy of doubt at the beginning, whether of their worth, of their theories, or of the whole enigmatic field in which they labour.

I will say with Lorenzo de Medici that those who do not hope for another life are always dead to this one.

We don't get to know people when they come to us; we must go to them to find out what they are like.

I do not now begin,--I still adore <br />Her whom I early cherish'd in my breast;<br /> Then once again with prudence dispossess'd, <br />And to whose heart I'm driven back once more. <br />The love of Petrarch, that all-glorious love, <br />Was unrequited, and, alas, full sad...

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.

None are so hopelessly enslaved, as those who falsely believe they are free. The truth has been kept from the depth of their minds by masters who rule them with lies. They feed them on falsehoods till wrong looks like right in their eyes.

Everything perfect in its kind has to transcend its own kind, it must become something different and incomparable. In some notes the nightingale is still a bird; then it rises above its class and seems to suggest to every winged creature what singing is truly like.

No one knows what he is doing so long as he is acting rightly; but of what is wrong one is always conscious.

Every great idea exerts, on first appearing, a tyrannical influence: Hence, the advantages it brings are turned all too soon into disadvantages.

All professional men are handicapped by not being allowed to ignore things which are useless.