Danh ngôn của Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (Sứ mệnh: 6)

He is happiest, be he king or peasant, who finds peace in his home.
The soul that sees beauty may sometimes walk alone.
If God had wanted me otherwise, He would have created me otherwise.
All the knowledge I possess everyone else can acquire, but my heart is all my own.
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.
To rule is easy, to govern difficult.
One must ask children and birds how cherries and strawberries taste.
A flippant, frivolous man may ridicule others, may controvert them, scorn them; but he who has any respect for himself seems to have renounced the right of thinking meanly of others.
Nothing is worth more than this day.
Few people have the imagination for reality.
I call architecture frozen music.
Death is a commingling of eternity with time; in the death of a good man, eternity is seen looking through time.
Love and desire are the spirit's wings to great deeds.
Life is the childhood of our immortality.
One always has time enough, if one will apply it well.
Nothing is more fearful than imagination without taste.
The person born with a talent they are meant to use will find their greatest happiness in using it.
Character develops itself in the stream of life.
Dream no small dreams for they have no power to move the hearts of men.
Correction does much, but encouragement does more.
First and last, what is demanded of genius is love of truth.
On all the peaks lies peace.
One can be instructed in society, one is inspired only in solitude.
Life belongs to the living, and he who lives must be prepared for changes.
No one would talk much in society if they knew how often they misunderstood others.
Being brilliant is no great feat if you respect nothing.
A really great talent finds its happiness in execution.
As soon as you trust yourself, you will know how to live.
None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free.
The mediator of the inexpressible is the work of art.
All things are only transitory.
I do not know myself, and God forbid that I should.
There are only two lasting bequests we can hope to give our children. One of these is roots, the other, wings.
Age merely shows what children we remain.
The artist alone sees spirits. But after he has told of their appearing to him, everybody sees them.
He only earns his freedom and his life Who takes them every day by storm.
Girls we love for what they are; young men for what they promise to be.
Love does not dominate; it cultivates.
To witness two lovers is a spectacle for the gods.
Personality is everything in art and poetry.
Beauty is a manifestation of secret natural laws, which otherwise would have been hidden from us forever.
Beauty is everywhere a welcome guest.
The Christian religion, though scattered and abroad will in the end gather itself together at the foot of the cross.
A useless life is an early death.
We know accurately only when we know little, with knowledge doubt increases.
He who does not think much of himself is much more esteemed than he imagines.
It is the strange fate of man, that even in the greatest of evils the fear of the worst continues to haunt him.
Happiness is a ball after which we run wherever it rolls, and we push it with our feet when it stops.
Those who hope for no other life are dead even for this.
What is important in life is life, and not the result of life.
Superstition is the poetry of life.
Thinking is more interesting than knowing, but less interesting than looking.
We always have time enough, if we will but use it aright.
Wisdom is found only in truth.
All theory, dear friend, is gray, but the golden tree of life springs ever green.
This is the highest wisdom that I own; freedom and life are earned by those alone who conquer them each day anew.
Ignorant men raise questions that wise men answered a thousand years ago.
Nature knows no pause in progress and development, and attaches her curse on all inaction.
In art the best is good enough.
Everything in the world may be endured except continual prosperity.
Knowing is not enough; we must apply. Willing is not enough; we must do.
An unused life is an early death.
All intelligent thoughts have already been thought; what is necessary is only to try to think them again.
Wood burns because it has the proper stuff in it; and a man becomes famous because he has the proper stuff in him.
The best government is that which teaches us to govern ourselves.
Science arose from poetry... when times change the two can meet again on a higher level as friends.
I love those who yearn for the impossible.
If I love you, what business is it of yours?
The way you see people is the way you treat them, and the way you treat them is what they become.
Doubt grows with knowledge.
Where is the man who has the strength to be true, and to show himself as he is?
What is uttered from the heart alone, Will win the hearts of others to your own.
He who possesses art and science has religion; he who does not possess them, needs religion.
It is after all the greatest art to limit and isolate oneself.
Only by joy and sorrow does a person know anything about themselves and their destiny. They learn what to do and what to avoid.
In nature we never see anything isolated, but everything in connection with something else which is before it, beside it, under it and over it.
Every day we should hear at least one little song, read one good poem, see one exquisite picture, and, if possible, speak a few sensible words.
Go to foreign countries and you will get to know the good things one possesses at home.
Which government is the best? The one that teaches us to govern ourselves.
Error is acceptable as long as we are young; but one must not drag it along into old age.