82 Quotes by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe to Inspire You
Inspiration comes in all forms: visual, audio, paint, ink—the list is endless. As creatives, we’ll often find ourselves in a slump searching for inspiration, or maybe we want to use the words of another to guide us towards a goal we’ve set for our creative expression. Whatever your reason, we wanted to inspire your journey with quotes by an iconic writer, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.
Goethe on art & creative expression:
“One out, 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.”
“God help us—for art is long and life so short.”
“The person born with a talent they are meant to use will find their greatest happiness in using it.”
“If you don’t feel it, you’ll never get it.”
“When I consider the narrow limits within which our active and inquiring faculties are confined; when I see how all our energies are wasted in providing for mere necessities, which again have no further end than to prolong a wretched existence; and then that all our satisfaction concerning such subjects of investigation ends in nothing better than a passive resignation..when I consider all this.. I am silent.”
“Daring ideas are like chessmen moved forward. They may be beaten, but they may start a winning game.”
“Knowing is not enough, we must apply. Willing is not enough, we must do.”
“What you get by achieving your goals is not as important as what you become by achieving your goals.”
“If you would create something,You must be something.”
“By seeking and blundering we learn.”
“Cease endlessly striving for what you would like to do and learn to love what must be done.”
Goethe on mindset, and the way we view ourselves:
“To think is easy. To act is hard. But the hardest thing in the world is to act in accordance with your thinking.”
“Tell me with whom you consort and I will tell you who you are; if I know how you spend your time, then I know what might become of you.”
“The greatest evil that can befall a man is that he should come to think ill of himself.”
“A man sees in the world what he carries in his heart.”
“Magic is believing in yourself, if you can do that, you can make anything happen.”
“As soon as you trust yourself, you will know how to live.”
“We must always change, renew, rejuvenate ourselves; other, we harden.”
“Know thyself? If I knew myself, I’d run away.”
“Nothing shows a man’s character more than what he laughs at.”
“The soul that sees beauty may sometimes walk alone.”
“Nothing is worth more than this day.”
“Leap and the net will appear.”
“Oblivion is full of people who allow the opinions of others to overrule their belief in themselves.”
“I treat my heart like a sick child and gratify its every fancy.”
“He is happiest, be he king or peasant, who finds peace in his home.”
“One can stand anything except a succession of ordinary days.”
“A mans manners are a mirror in which he shows his portrait.”
Goethe on how we view others, and the world around us:
“We do not have to visit a madhouse to find disordered minds; our planet is the mental institution of the universe.”
“The human race is often a monotonous affair. Most people spend the greatest part of their time working in order to live, and what little freedom remains so fills them with fear that they seek out and every means to be rid of it.”
“At the moment of commitment the entire universe conspires to assist you.”
“If you treat an individual as he is, he will remain how he is. But if you treat him as if he were what he ought to be and could be, he will become what he out to be and could be.”
“People who think honestly and deeply have a hostile attitude towards the public.”
“What a torment it is to see so much loveliness passing and reposing before us, and yet not dare to lay hold of it!”
“It is ever true that he who does nothing for others, does nothing for himself.”
“You can easily judge the character of a man by how he treats those who can do nothing for him.”
“Few people have the imagination for reality.”
“The soul that sees beauty may sometimes walk alone.”
“What is uttered from the heart alone will win the heart of others to your own.”
Goethe on love, friendship & companionship:
“The world is so empty if one thinks only of mountains rivers & cities; but to know someone who thinks & feels with us, & who, though distant, is close to use in spirit, this makes the earth for us an inhabited garden.”
“If I accept you as you are, I will make you worse; however, if I treat you as though you are what you are capable of becoming, I help you become that.”
“I have so much in me, and the feeling for her absorbs it all; I have so much, and without her it all comes to nothing.”
“We are shaped and fashioned by what we love.”
“Love does not dominate; it cultivates."
“This is the true measure of love: when we believe that we alone can love, that no one could ever have loved so before us, and that no one will ever love in the same way after us.”
“Sometimes I don’t understand how another can love her, is allowed to love her, since I love her so completely myself, so intensely, so fully, grasp nothing, know nothing, have nothing but her!”
“I love those who yearn for the impossible.”
“It’s true that nothing in this world makes us so necessary to others as the affection we have for them.”
“Love grants in a moment what toil can hardly achieve in an age.”
“Nothing is more dangerous than solitude.”
Goethe on freedom:
“Life belongs to the living, and he who lives must be prepared for changes.”
“None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free.”
“Who is the happiest of men? He who values the merits of other, and in their pleasure takes joy, even as though ‘twere his own.”
“He who moves not forward, goes backward.”
“The best slave is the one who thinks he is free.”
“Just trust yourself and you’ll learn the art of living.”
“You must be either the servant or the master, the hammer or the anvil.”
Goethe on progress & growth:
“An unused life is an early death.”
“Every situation—nay, every moment—is of infinite worth; for it is the representative of a whole eternity.”
“We look back on our life as a thing of broken pieces, because our mistakes and failures are always the first to strike us, and outweigh in our imagination what we have accomplished and attained.”
“The deed is everything; the fame is nothing.”
“What is not started today is never finished tomorrow.”
“There is no past we can bring back by longing for it. There is only an eternal now that builds and creates out of the past something new and better.”
“Man is not born to solve the problem of the universe, but to find out what he has to do: and to restrain himself within the limits of his comprehension.”
“Keep not standing fixed and rooted. Briskly venture, briskly roam.”
“Things which matter most must never be at the mercy of things which matter least.”
“We are our own devils; we drive ourselves out of our Edens.”
“Divide and rule, a sound motto. Unite and lead, a better one.”
Goethe on strength & resilience:
“Enjoy when you can, and endure when you must.”
“Courage is the commitment to begin without any guarantee of success.”
“All truly wise thoughts have been thought already thousands of times; but to make them truly ours, we must think them over again honestly, until they take root in our personal experience.”
“Nothing is so strong as gentleness, nothing so gentle as real strength.”
“I am proud of my heart alone, it is the sole source of everything, all our strength, happiness and misery. All the knowledge I possess everyone else can acquire, but my heart is all my own.”
“Everybody wants to be somebody, but nobody wants to grow…”
“There are but two roads that lead to an important goal and to the doing of great things: strength and perseverance. Strength is the lot of but a few privileged men; but austere perseverance, harsh and continuous, may be employed by the smallest of us and rarely fails of its purpose, for its silent power grows irresistibly greater with time.”
“Everything is hard before it is easy.”
“On top of the world, or in the depths of despair.”
“Where light is the brightest, the shadows are the deepest.”
Goethe on travel & culture:
“Nothing can be compared to the new life that the discovery of another country provides for a thoughtful person. Although I am still the same I believe to have changed to the bones.”
“The decline of literature indicates the decline of a nation.”
“A person who does not know the history of the last 3,000 years wanders in the darkness of ignorance, unable to make sense of the reality around him.”
“A man sees in the world what he carries in his heart.”
