The further knowledge advances, the nearer we come to the unfathomable.

What were a God who only gave the world a push from without, or let it spin around His finger? I look for a God who moves the world from within, who fosters nature in Himself, Himself in nature; so that naught of all that lives and moves and has its being in Him ever forgets His force or His spirit.

To every one [Nature] appears in a form of his own. She hides herself in a thousand names and terms, and is always the same.

There is nothing more odious than the majority; it consists of a few powerful men to lead the way; of accommodating rascals and submissive weaklings; and of a mass of men who trot after them, without in the least knowing their mind.

Nature! We are surrounded by her and locked in her clasp: powerless to leave her, and powerless to come closer to her. Unasked and unwarned she takes us up into the whirl of her dance, and hurries on with us till we are weary and fall from her arms.

There is constant life in [Nature], motion and development; and yet she remains where she was. She is eternally changing, nor for a moment does she stand still. Of rest she knows nothing, and to all stagnation she has affixed her curse. She is steadfast; her step is measured, her exceptions rare, her laws immutable.

The assault of our enemies is not part of our life; it is only part of our experience; we throw it off and guard ourselves against it as against frost, storm, rain, hail, or any other of the external evils which may be expected to happen.

When I observe the luminous progress and expansion of natural science in modern times, I seem to myself like a traveller going eastwards at dawn, and gazing at the growing light with joy, but also with impatience; looking forward with longing to the advent of the full and final light, but, nevertheless, having to turn away his eyes when the sun appeared, unable to bear the splendour he had awaited with so much desire.

[Nature] is all things. She rewards herself and punishes herself; and in herself rejoices and is distressed. She is rough and gentle, loving and terrible, powerless and almighty. In her everything is always present. Past or Future she knows not. The Present is her Eternity.

[Nature] spurts forth her creatures out of nothing, and tells them not whence they come and whither they go. They have only to go their way: she knows the path.

We look back upon our life only as on a thing of broken pieces, because our misses and failures are always the first to strike us, and outweigh in our imagination what we have done and attained.

In science it is a service of the highest merit to seek out those fragmentary truths attained by the ancients, and to develop them further.

We live in the midst of [Nature] and are strangers. She speaks to us unceasingly and betrays not her secret.

Science helps us before all things in this, that it somewhat lightens the feeling of wonder with which Nature fills us; then, however, as life becomes more and more complex, it creates new facilities for the avoidance of what would do us harm and the promotion of what will do us good.

[Nature's] crown is Love. Only through Love can we come near her. She puts gulfs between all things, and all things strive to be interfused. She isolates everything, that she may draw everything together. With a few draughts from the cup of Love she repays for a life full of trouble.

Rest not! Life is sweeping by;

Go and dare before you die.

Something mighty and sublime

Leave behind to conquer time!

He who is firm in will molds the world to himself.

Age does not make us childish, as some say; it finds us true children.

We find from experience that yellow excites a warm and agreeable impression.... The eye is gladdened, the heart expanded and cheered, a glow seems at once to breathe toward us.

A man who is ignorant of foreign languages is also ignorant of his own language.

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 any and every means to be rid of it.

JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE, The Sorrows of Young Werther

More light!

Love does not dominate; it cultivates.

JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE, attributed, Words of Wisdom: Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Thinking is more interesting than knowing, but less interesting than looking.

JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE, attributed, 20,000 Quips & Quotes

How difficult it is to get men to balance a present sacrifice with a future advantage! How hard to induce them to wish an end, and not hesitate at the means! How many mingle together means and ends, rejoicing in the first without having the other before their eyes. We can offer up much in the large, but to make sacrifices in little things is what we are seldom equal to.

JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE, attributed, Day's Collacon

Whatever it be ... judgment or feeling, that leads us to sacrifice one thing for another, or prefer one before another, decision and perseverance are in my opinion the most praiseworthy qualities in human beings. We cannot buy goods and have our money too, and the man who longs for the wares but has not the heart to sacrifice his money, is as badly off as he who repents his purchase when it is already in his hands.

JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE, Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship

Alas! sorrow from happiness is oft evolved.

JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE, Die Natürliche Tochter

The sagacious reader who is capable of reading between these lines what does not stand written in them, but is nevertheless implied, will be able to form some conception.

JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE, Autobiography

Yes, I have finally arrived to this Capital of the World! I now see all the dreams of my youth coming to life... Only in Rome is it possible to understand Rome.

JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE, Italian Journey

One cannot develop taste from what is of average quality but only from the very best.

JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE, Conversations with Eckermann

When one is polite in German, one lies.

JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE, Faust: Part II

The present moment is a powerful deity.

JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE, attributed, Day's Collacon

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.

JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE, Elective Affinities

A human being needs only a small plot of ground on which to be happy, and even less to lie beneath.

JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE, The Sorrows of Young Werther and Selected Writings

There is nothing more frightful than ignorance in action.

JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE, Collected Works

A good man, through obscurest aspirations,
Has still an instinct of the one true way.

JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE, Faust

When we lack ourselves, we lack everything.

JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE, The Sorrows of Young Werther

If you start to think about your physical or moral condition, you usually find that you are sick.

JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE, Proverbs in Prose

Nobody, they say, is a hero to his valet.

JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE, attributed, Day's Collacon

We do not have to visit a madhouse to find disordered minds; our planet is the mental institution of the universe.

JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE, attributed, Return of the Portable Curmudgeon

Where there is much light the shade is deepest.

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