Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Modern poets put a lot of water into their ink.

Scientific knowledge helps us mainly because it makes the wonder to which we are called by nature rather more intelligible.

You've only got to grow old to be more lenient; I see no fault committed of which I too haven't been guilty.

Nothing should be treasured more highly than the value of the day.

If some people hadn't felt obliged to repeat what is untrue simply because they had at one point maintained it, they would have turned into quite different people.

You ask which form of government is the best? Whichever teaches us to govern ourselves.

Truth is contrary to our nature, not so error, and this for a very simple reason; truth demands that we should recognize ourselves as limited, error flatters us that, in one way or another, we are unlimited.

It is as certain as it is marvelous that truth and error come from one source. Therefore one often may not injure error, because at the same time one injures truth.

People say, “Artist, study nature!” But it is no small matter to develop what is noble out of what is common, beauty out of what lacks form.

Error is related to truth as sleeping is to waking. I have observed that when one has been in error, one turns to truth as though revitalized.

The world is a bell that is cracked: it clatters, but does not ring out clearly.

It is the most foolish of all errors for young people of good intelligence to imagine that they will forfeit their originality if they acknowledge truth already acknowledged by others.