Great Quotes from Johann Goethe
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe was a German poet, playwright, novelist, scientist, statesman, theatre director, and critic. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s works include plays, poetry, literature and aesthetic criticism, and treatises on botany, anatomy. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe is considered to be the greatest German literary figure of the modern era.
“You can easily judge the character of a man by how he treats those who can do nothing for him.”
“Many people take no care of their money till they come nearly to the end of it and others do just the same with their time.”
“Nothing is worth more than this day.”
“Of all the thieves idiots are the most harmful they steal from us our time and mood.”
“If you treat an individual as he is, he will remain how he is. But if you treat him as if he were what he ought to be and could be, he will become what he ought to be and could be.”
“What you get by achieving your goals is not as important as what you become by achieving your goals.”
“Life is too short to drink bad wine.”
“What is not started today is never finished tomorrow.”
“Doubt can only be removed by action.”
“Those who stopped loving and making mistakes have buried themselves alive.”
“No one would talk much in society if they knew how often they misunderstood others.”
“The most ridiculous desire is the desire to please everybody.”
“Too many parents make life hard for their children by trying, too zealously to make it easy for them.”
“What is uttered from the heart alone will win the heart of others to your own.”
“Whoever wishes to keep a secret must hide in the fact that he possesses one.”
“Everybody wants to be somebody, but nobody wants to grow…”
“Who is the happiest of men? he who values the merits of others, and in their pleasure takes joy, even as though ’twere his own.”
“Oblivion is full of people who allow the opinions of others to overrule their belief in themselves.”
“Inspiration is not a herring, which can be pickled for many years.”
“We all of us live upon the past, and through the past we are destroyed.”
“He is happiest, be he king or peasant, who finds peace in his home.”
“There is no past we can bring back by longing for it. There is only an eternal now that builds and creates out of the past something new and better.”
“For a man to achieve all that is demanded of him, he must regard himself as greater than he is.”
“He who moves not forward goes backwards.”
“To be pleased with one’s limits is a wretched state.”
“Love is an ideal thing, marriage is a real thing.”
“One always has time enough, if one will apply it well.”
“The best government is that which teaches us to govern ourselves.”
“We know accurately only when we know little with knowledge doubt increases.”
“Our friends show us what we can do; our enemies teach us what we must do.”
“Destiny grants us our wishes, but in its own way, in order to give us something beyond our wishes.”
“The intelligent man finds almost everything ridiculous, the sensible man hardly anything.”
“Do not give in too much to feelings. A overly sensitive heart is an unhappy possession on this shaky earth.”
“Go to foreign countries and you will get to know the good things one possesses at home.”
“Character is formed in the stormy billows of the world.”
“Knowing is not enough; we must apply. Willing is not enough; we must do.”
“The way you see people is the way you treat them, and the way you treat them is what they become.”
“As soon as you trust yourself, you will know how to live.”
“The greatest thing in this world is not so much where we stand as in what direction we are moving.”
“Kindness is the golden chain by which society is bound together.”
“Everything is hard before it is easy.”
“There is nothing in the world more shameful than establishing oneself on lies and fables.”
“Nothing shows a man’s character more than what he laughs at.”
“The greatest evil that can befall man is that he should come to think ill of himself.”
“I can tell you, honest friend, what to believe: believe life, it teaches better that book or orator.”
