Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Men Quotations

Ignorant men raise questions that wise men answered a thousand years ago.

The most happy man is he who knows how to bring into relation the end and beginning of his life.

To the person with a firm purpose all men and things are servants.

The man with insight enough to admit his limitations comes nearest to perfection.

A man's manners are a mirror in which he shows his portrait.

If you wish to know the mind of a man, listen to his words.

The man who occupies the first place seldom plays the principal part.

What life half gives a man, posterity gives entirely.

Death is a commingling of eternity with time; in the death of a good man, eternity is seen looking through time.

For a man to achieve all that is demanded of him he must regard himself as greater than he is.

The right man is the one who seizes the moment.

Who is the wisest man? He who neither knows or wishes for anything else than what happens.

Wood burns because it has the proper stuff in it; and a man becomes famous because he has the proper stuff in him.

Men show their character in nothing more clearly than by what they think laughable.

Girls we love for what they are; men for what they promise to be.

I respect the man who knows distinctly what he wishes. The greater part of all mischief in the world arises from the fact that men do not sufficiently understand their own aims. They have undertaken to build a tower, and spend no more labor on the foundation than would be necessary to erect a hut.

The phrases men are accustomed to repeat incessantly, end by becoming convictions and ossify the organs of intelligence

Look at a man the way he is and he only becomes worse, but look at him as if he were what he could be, then he becomes what he should be.

We can always redeem the man who aspires and strives.

Whenever I hear people talking about liberal ideas, I am always astounded that men should love to fool themselves with empty sounds. An idea should never be liberal; it must be vigorous, positive, and without loose ends so that it may fulfill its divine mission and be productive.

If any man wish to write in a clear style, let him be first clear in his thoughts; and if any would write in a noble style, let him first possess a noble soul.

Man... knows only when he is satisfied and when he suffers, and only his sufferings and his satisfactions instruct him concerning himself, teach him what to seek and what to avoid. For the rest, man is a confused creature; he knows not whence he comes or whither he goes, he knows little of the world, and above all, he knows little of himself.

There is no better deliverance from the world than through art, and a man can form no surer bond with it.

Old age is never honored among us, but only indulged, as childhood is; and old men lose one of the most precious rights of man,--that of being judged by their peers.

The greatest evil that can befall man is that he should come to think ill of himself.

A reasonable man needs only to practice moderation to find happiness.

The best fortune that can fall to a man is that which corrects his defects and makes up for his failings.

Every man has enough power left to carry out that of which he is convinced.

Such is the frailty of man that even where he makes the truest and most forcible impression in the memory, in the heart of his beloved, there also he must perish.

Love of truth shows itself in this, that a man knows how to find and value the good in everything.

A man who cannot command himself will always be a slave.

When we treat man as he is, we make him worse than he is; when we treat him as if he already were what he potentially could be, we make him what he should be.

No doubt you are right... there would be far less suffering amongst mankind if men... did not employ their imaginations so assiduously in recalling the memory of past sorrow, instead of bearing their present lot with equanimity.

We can really respect a man only if he doesn't always look out for himself.

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.

You accuse a woman of wavering affections, but don't blame her; she is just looking for a consistent man.

Against criticism a man can neither protest nor defend himself; he must act in spite of it, and then it will gradually yield to him.

Few are open to conviction, but the majority of men are open to persuasion

Perfection is the measure of heaven, and the wish to be perfect the measure of man.

Stood I, O Nature! man alone in thee, Then were it worth one's while a man to be.

No two men see the world exactly alike, and different temperaments will apply in different ways a principle that they both acknowledge.

Most man only care for science so far as they get a living by it, and that they worship even error when it affords them a subsistence.

Let's plunge ourselves into the roar of time, the whirl of accident; may pain and pleasure, success and failure, shift as they will -- it's only action that can make a man.

It is with art as with love: How can a man of the world,with all his distractions, keep the inwardness which an artist must possess if he hopes to attain perfection? That inwardness which the spectator must share if he is to understand the work as the artist wishes and hopes... Believe me, talents are like virtues; either you must love them for their own sake or renounce them altogether. And they are only recognized and rewarded when we have practised them in secret, like a dangerous mystery."

Insofar as he makes use of his healthy senses, man himself is the best and most exact scientific instrument possible. The greatest misfortune of modern physics is that its experiments have been set apart from man, as it were, physics refuses to recognize nature in anything not shown by artificial instruments, and even uses this as a measure of its accomplishments.

A man's name is not like a mantle which merely hangs about him...but a perfectly fitting garment, which, like the skin, has grown over him, at which one cannot rake and scrape without injuring the man himself.

To the man of thought almost nothing is really ridiculous.

To be active is the primary vocation of man.

In society every man is taken for what he gives himself out to be; but he must give himself out to be something. Better to be slightly disagreeable than altogether insignificant.

A man is not little when he finds it difficult to cope with circumstances, but when circumstances overmaster him.

Man, be he who he may, experiences a last piece of good fortune and a last day. [Ger., Der Mensch erfahrt, er sei auch wer er mag, Ein letztes Gluck und einen letzten Tag.]

What men usually say of misfortunes, that they never come alone, may with equal truth be said of good fortune; nay, of other circumstances which gather round us in a harmonious way, whether it arise from a kind of fatality, or that man has the power of attracting to himself things that are mutually related.

As a man is, so is his God; therefore God was so often an object of mockery. [Ger., Wie einer ist, so ist sein Gott, Darum ward Gott so oft zu Spott.]

The world cannot do without great men, but great men are very troublesome to the world.

A man may twist as he pleases, and do what he pleases, but he inevitably comes back to the track to which nature has destined him.

He only fears men who does not know them, and he who avoids them will soon misjudge them. [Ger., Die Menschen furchtet nur, wer sie nicht kennt Und wer sie meidet, wird sie bald verkennen.]

Beloved brother, let us not forget that man can never get away from himself. [Ger., Lass uns, geliebter Bruder, nicht vergessen, Dass von sich selbst der Mensch nicht scheiden kann.]

For a brave man deserves a well-endowed girl. [Ger., Denn ein wackerer Mann verdient ein begutertes Madchen.]

Prudent and active men, who know their strength and use it with limit and circumspection, alone go far in the affairs of the world.

Forget not that the man who cannot enjoy his own natural gifts in silence, and find his reward in the exercise of them, will generally find himself badly off.

Shakespeare is a great psychologist, and whatever can be known of the heart of man may be found in his plays.

Superstition is the poetry of life. It is inherent in man's nature; and when we think it is wholly eradicated, it takes refuge in the strangest holes and corners, whence it peeps out all at once, as soon as it can do it with safety.

A vain man can never be altogether rude. Desirous as he is of pleasing, he fashions his manners after those of others.

Man usually believes, if only words he hears, That also with them goes material for thinking. [Ger., Gewohnlich glaubt der Mensch, wenn er nur Worte hort, Es musse sich dabei doch auch was denken.]

Few men have imagination enough for reality.

The ground that a good man treads is hallowed.

Animals, we have been told, are taught by their organs. Yes, I would add, and so are men, but men have this further advantage that they can also teach their organs in return.

The greatest joy of a thinking man is to have searched the explored and to quietly revere the unexplored.

Are we not also married to conscience which we would love to get rid of often enough since it is more bothersome than a man or a woman ever could become?

New inventions can and will be made; however, nothing new can be thought of that concerns moral man. Everything has already been thought and said which at best we can express in different forms and give new expressions to.

Someone criticized an elderly man for wooing young women. He replied that that was the only way to rejuvenation, which was, afterall, everybody's wish.

God made man simple, but how he changed and got complicated is hard to say.

Men are so inclined to content themselves with what is commonest; the spirit and the senses so easily grow dead to the impressions of the beautiful and perfect, that every one should study, by all methods, to nourish in his mind the faculty of feeling these things. ...For this reason, one ought every day at least, to hear a little song, read a good poem, see a fine picture, and, if it were possible, to speak a few reasonable words.

No man learns to know his inmost nature by introspection, for he rates himself sometimes too low, and often too high, by his own measurement. Man knows himself only by comparing himself with other men; it is life that touches his genuine worth.

When you take a man as he is, you make him worse. When you take a man as he can be, you make him better.

Most men, even the most accomplished, are of limited faculties; every one sets a value on certain qualities in himself and others: these alone he is willing to favour, these alone will he have cultivated.

I hold to faith in the divine love - which, so many years ago for a brief moment in a little corner of the earth, walked about as a man bearing the name of Jesus Christ - as the foundation on which alone my happiness rests.

The misery that oppresses you lies not in your profession but in yourself! What man in the world would not find his situation intolerable if he chooses a craft, an art, indeed any form of life, without experiencing an inner calling? Whoever is born with a talent, or to a talent, must surely find in that the most pleasing of occupations! Everything on this earth has its difficult sides! Only some inner drive - pleasure, love - can help us overcome obstacles, prepare a path, and lift as out of the narrow circle in which others tread out their anguished, miserable existences!

A man does not mind being blamed for his faults, and being punished for them, and he patiently suffers much for them; but he becomes impatient if he is required to give them up.

Nothing is more odious than the majority, for it consists of a few powerful leaders, a certain number of accommodating scoundrels and submissive weaklings, and a mass of men who trot after them without thinking, or knowing their own minds.

What man does not know, Or has not thought of, Wanders in the night Through the labyrinth of the mind.

A man is really alive only when he delights in the good-will of others.

The follies of the wise man are known to himself, but hidden from the world.

As in Rome there is, apart from the Romans, a population of statues, so apart from this real world there is a world of illusion, almost more potent, in which most men live.

Painting predicates what man wants to see, and what man ought to see, not what he ordinarily sees.

A state of true and universal tolerance is best ensured by leaving alone the peculiarities of men and peoples.

The important thing is not to know more than all men, but to know more at each moment than any particular man.

For I have been a man, and that means to have been a fighter.

Men in a state of nature, uncivilized nations, children, have a great fondness for colors in their utmost brightness, and especially for yellow-red.

Man knows himself only insofar as he knows the world, becoming aware of it if only within himself, and of himself self only within it. Each new subject, well observed, opens up within us a new organ of thought.

But the valid issue is the extent to which man knows how to form and master the material at his command.

Character - in things great and small - is indicated when a man (or person) pursues with sustained follow-through what he feels himself capable of doing.

Man errs, till he has ceased to strive.

A man's shortcomings are taken from his epoch; his virtues and greatness belong to himself.

Who is the happiest man? He who is alive to the merit of others, and can rejoice in their enjoyment as if it were his own.

Each ten years of a man's life has its own fortunes, its own hopes, its own desires.

As man is, so is his God. And thus is God oft strangely odd.

One should not wish anyone disagreeable conditions of life; but for him who is involved in them by chance, they are touchstones of characters and of the most decisive value to man.

The highest happiness of man ... is to have probed what is knowable and quietly to revere what is unknowable.

In politics as on a sickbed men toss from side to side in hope of lying more comfortably.