# Quote — Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Elective Affinities

> Let us live in as small a circle as we will, we are either debtors or creditors before we have had time to look round.

- Author: [Johann Wolfgang von Goethe](https://www.leafyquotes.com/johann-wolfgang-von-goethe.md)
- Book: [Elective Affinities](https://www.leafyquotes.com/johann-wolfgang-von-goethe/elective-affinities.md)
- Source: [Wikiquote](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Johann_Wolfgang_von_Goethe#Elective_Affinities_(1809)) ([CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/))
- Quote page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/johann-wolfgang-von-goethe/elective-affinities/let-us-live

## More from this book

> The architect hands over to the rich man with the keys to his palace all the ease and comfort to be found in it without being able to enjoy any of it himself. Must the artist not in this way gradually become alienated from his art, since his work, like a child that has been provided for and left home, can no longer have any effect upon its father? And how beneficial it must have been for art when it was intended to be concerned almost exclusively with what was public property, and belonged to everybody and therefore also to the artist!

p. 170 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/johann-wolfgang-von-goethe/elective-affinities/the-architect-hands.md)

> There are occasions ... when all consolation is base and it is a duty to despair.

p. 147 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/johann-wolfgang-von-goethe/elective-affinities/there-are-occasions.md)

> There is no outward mark of politeness that does not have a profound moral reason. The right education would be that which taught the outward mark and the moral reason together.

p. 195 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/johann-wolfgang-von-goethe/elective-affinities/there-is-no-outward.md)