Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

“If God had wanted me otherwise, He would have created me otherwise.”

“Great thoughts and a pure heart, that is what we should ask from God.”

“I do not know myself, and God forbid that I should.”

“Go to foreign countries and you will get to know the good things one possesses at home.”

“To rule is easy, to govern difficult.”

“Being brilliant is no great feat if you respect nothing.”

“Love and desire are the spirit's wings to great deeds.”

“A really great talent finds its happiness in execution.”

“Character, in great and little things, means carrying through what you feel able to do.”

“The person born with a talent they are meant to use will find their greatest happiness in using it.”

“None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free.”

“Those who hope for no other life are dead even for this.”

“Few people have the imagination for reality.”

“Nothing is more fearful than imagination without taste.”

“All intelligent thoughts have already been thought what is necessary is only to try to think them again.”

“All the knowledge I possess everyone else can acquire, but my heart is all my own.”

“Doubt grows with knowledge.”

“We know accurately only when we know little, with knowledge doubt increases.”

“To witness two lovers is a spectacle for the gods.”

“First and last, what is demanded of genius is love of truth.”

“There is a courtesy of the heart it is allied to love. From its springs the purest courtesy in the outward behavior.”

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

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

“Nature knows no pause in progress and development, and attaches her curse on all inaction.”