Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Quotes
Just as, out of habit, one consults a run-down clock as though it were still going, so too one may look at the face of a beautiful woman as though she were still in love.
Individuality of expression is the beginning and end of all art.
When you see some evil you proceed to immediate action, you make an immediate attack to cure the symptom.
Mysteries do not as yet amount to miracles.
Piety is not an end but a means to attain by the greatest peace of mind the highest degree of culture.
Theories usually result from the precipitate reasoning of an impatient mind which would like to be rid of phenomena and replaces them with images, concepts, indeed often with mere words.
The desire to explain what is simple by what is complex, what is easy by what is difficult, is a calamity affecting the whole body of science, known, it is true, to men of insight, but not generally admitted.
The sum which two married people owe to one another defies calculation. It is an infinite debt, which can only be discharged through all eternity.
The fate of the architect is the strangest of all. How often he expends his whole soul, his whole heart and passion, to produce buildings into which he himself may never enter.
A teacher who can arouse a feeling for one single good action, for one single good poem, accomplishes more than he who fills our memory with rows on rows of natural objects, classified with name and form.
Three things are to be looked to in a building: that it stand on the right spot; that it be securely founded; that it be successfully executed.
No one would talk much in society, if he knew how often he misunderstands others.
