The experiences show us just as we are; they make us see our own defects.
It makes no good to point the failures out without showing at the same time the remedy to address them.
If you live criticizing people, you won’t have time to love them.
Superstition is rooted in a much deeper and more sensitive layer of the psyche than skepticism.
No limit, no definition, may restrict the range or depth of the human spirit’s passage into its own secrets or the world’s.
Self knowledge is best learned not by contemplation, but by action.
To the world you might be one person, but to one person, you might be the world. Kindness is the golden chain by which our world is bound together.
To know where a thing is we must have found it.
It is working within limits that the craftsman reveals himself.
When one is polite in German, one lies.
I have often reaped what others have sowed. My work is the work of a collective being that bears the name Goethe.
I will say with Lorenzo de Medici that those who do not hope for another life are always dead to this one.
Most pioneers are at the mercy of doubt at the beginning, whether of their worth, of their theories, or of the whole enigmatic field in which they labour.
Win for yourself that which your fathers have won.
Higher yet and higher out of clouds and night, nearer yet and nearer rising to the light – light, serene and holy where my soul may rest, purified and lowly, sanctified and blest.
If you want to get pleasure out of life, you must attach value to the world.
Light has called forth one organ to become its like, and thus the eye is formed by the light and for the light so that the inner light may emerge to meet the outer light.
Beauty and Genius must be kept afar if one would avoid becoming their slave.
It is a great error to take oneself for more than one is, or for less than one is worth.
Talents are nurtured best in solitude, But character on life’s tempestuous seas!