Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Nothing is more frightful than to see ignorance in action.

I'm sorry for people who make a great to-do about the transitory nature of things and get lost in meditations of earthly nothingness. Surely we are here precisely so as to turn what passes into something that endures; but this is possible only if you can appreciate both.

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

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.

None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free.

Art is in itself noble; that is why the artist has no fear of what is common. This, indeed, is already ennobled when he takes it up.

People have to become really bad before they care for nothing but mischief, and delight in it.

Men who give way easily to tears are good. I have nothing to do with those who hearts are dry and who eyes are dry!

He who does not speak foreign languages knows nothing about his own.

Very often when we have found ourselves forever separated from what we had intended to achieve, we have already, on our way, found something else worth desiring.

Association with women is the basic element of good manners.

I am indeed but a wanderer, a pilgrim on earth. But are you anything more?