Be above it! Make the world serve your purpose, but do not serve it. — Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Copy Share Image
To the person with a firm purpose all men and things are servants. — Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Copy Share Image
Secrecy has many advantages, for when you tell someone the purpose of any object right away, they often think there is nothing… — Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Copy Share Image
Austere perseverance, hash and continuous... rarely fails of its purpose, for its silent power grows irresistible greater with time. — Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Copy Share Image
The work of art may have a moral effect, but to demand moral purpose from the artist is to make him ruin… — Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Copy Share Image
Aptitudes are assumed, they should become accomplishments. That is the purpose of all education. — Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Copy Share Image
Thus one can observe that those who proclaim piety as their goal and purpose usually turn into hypocrites. — Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Copy Share Image
Man is not born to solve the problems of the universe, but to find out what he has to do... within the… — Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe Copy Share Image
Art is a severe business; most serious when employed in grand and sacred objects. The artist stands higher than art, higher than… — Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Copy Share Image
There are but two roads that lead to an important goal and to the doing of great things: strength and perseverance. Strength… — Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Copy Share Image
War is in truth a disease in which the juices that serve health and maintenance are used for the sole purpose of… — Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Copy Share Image
Children can scarcely be fashioned to meet with our likes and our purpose. Just as God did us give them, so must… — Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Copy Share Image
I have never looked at foreign countries or gone there but with the purpose of getting to know the general human qualities… — Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Copy Share Image
Wood burns because it has the proper stuff for that purpose in it; and a man becomes renowned because he has the necessary stuff in him. Renown is not to be sought, and all pursuit of it is vain. A person may, indeed, by skillful conduct and various artificial means, make a sort of name for himself; but if the… — Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Copy Share
The longer I live, the more it grieves me to see man, who occupies his supreme place for the very purpose of imposing his will upon nature, and freeing himself and his from an outrageous necessity--to see him taken up with some false notion, and doing just the opposite of what he wants to do; and then, because the whole… — Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Copy Share
All ages have said and repeated that one should strive to know one's self. This is a strange demand which no one up to now has measured up to and, strictly considered, no one should. With all their study and effort, people are directed to what is outside, to the world about them, and they are kept busy coming to… — Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Copy Share
True works of art contain their own theory and give us the measurement according to which we should judge them. — Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Copy Share Image
I never believed in trying to do anything. Whatever I set out to do I found I had already accomplished. — Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Copy Share Image
All lyrical work must, as a whole, be perfectly intelligible, but in some particulars a little unintelligible. — Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Copy Share Image
We know accurately only when we know little, with knowledge doubt increases. — Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Copy Share Image
It is easier to perceive error than to find truth, for the former lies on the surface and is easily seen, while the latter… — Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Copy Share Image
The connoisseur of art must be able to appreciate what is simply beautiful, but the common run of people is satisfied with ornament — Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe Copy Share Image
Let us not dream that reason can ever be popular. Passions, emotions, may be made popular; but reason remains ever the property of an… — Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Copy Share Image
