Wise Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Quotes

Unlike grown-ups, children have little need to deceive themselves.
- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

The man with insight enough to admit his limitations
comes nearest to perfection.
- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Treat people as if they were what they ought to be,
and you'll help them to become
what they are capable of becoming.
- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Treat a man as he is and he will remain as he is.
Treat a man as he can and should be,
and he will become as he can and should be.
- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Belief is not the beginning but the end of all knowledge.
- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

There are nine requisites for contented living:
HEALTH enough to make work a pleasure;
WEALTH enough to support your needs;
STRENGTH enough to battle with difficulties and forsake them;
GRACE enough to confess your sins and overcome them;
PATIENCE enough to toil until some good is accomplished;
CHARITY enough to see some good in your neighbor;
LOVE enough to move you to be useful and helpful to others;
FAITH enough to make real the things of God;
HOPE enough to remove all anxious fears concerning the future.
- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Knowledge is soon changed, then lost in the mist, an echo half-heard.
- Gene Wolfe

As soon as man does not take his existence for granted,
but beholds it as something
unfathomably mysterious, thought begins.
- Albert Schweitzer

Act the way you'd like to be
and soon you'll be the way you act.
- Leonard Cohen

We should meet abuse by forbearance.
Human nature is so constituted that
if we take absolutely no notice of anger or abuse,
the person indulging in it will soon weary of it and stop.
- Mohandas (Mahatma) Gandhi

If you think you are beaten, you are.
If you think you dare not, you don't.
If you'd like to win, but think you can't
It's almost a cinch you won't.
Life's battles don't always go to the stronger or faster man;
But soon or late the man who wins is the one who thinks he can.
- Anonymous

Finish each day and be done with it.
You have done what you could;
some blunders and absurdities have crept in;
forget them as soon as you can.
Tomorrow is a new day;
you shall begin it serenely
and with too high a spirit
to be encumbered with your old nonsense.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

If a man does not make new acquaintances
as he advances through life,
he will soon find himself alone.
A man, sir, should keep his friendships in constant repair.
- Samuel Johnson

You cannot do a kindness too soon,
for you never know how soon it will be too late.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

As soon as someone is identified as an unsung hero,
he no longer is.
- George Carlin

I am but a grain of sand on the beach of life.
My footprints in the sands of time soon wash away.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

A truly good book teaches me better than to read it.
I must soon lay it down, and commence living on its hint.
What I began by reading, I must finish by acting.
- Henry David Thoreau

Truth is by nature self-evident.
As soon as you remove the cobwebs of ignorance
that surround it, it shines clear.
- Mohandas (Mahatma) Gandhi

The tragedy of life is not that it ends so soon,
but that we wait so long to begin it.
- Anonymous

When people get married because they think
it's a long-time love affair,
they'll be divorced very soon,
because all love affairs end in disappointment.
But marriage is a recognition of a spiritual identity.
- Joseph Campbell

Soon we'll be out amid the cold world's strife.
Soon we'll be sliding down the razor blade of life.
But as we go our sordid sep'rate ways,
We shall ne'er forget thee, thou golden college days.
Hearts full of youth,
Hearts full of truth,
Six parts gin to one part vermouth.
- Tom Lehrer - song: Bright College Days,
album: An Evening Wasted With Tom Lehrer

There is a fine line between perseverance and insanity.
At what point have you tried your best,
and it's time to do something different?
It's a balance - a paradox.
If you get in the habit of giving up
as soon as something gets difficult,
your life won't work,
but if you keep tilting at windmills -
madly trying the same thing again and again,
your life also won't work.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

A people that values its privileges
above its principles
soon loses both.
- Dwight D. Eisenhower

There never was and is not likely soon to be
a nation of philosophers,
nor am I certain it is desirable that there should be.
- Henry David Thoreau

On His Blindness:
When I consider how my light is spent
Ere half my days in this dark world and wide,
And that one Talent which is death to hide
Lodged with me useless, though my soul more bent
To serve therewith my Maker, and present
My true account, lest He returning chide,
"Doth God exact day-labour, light denied?"
I fondly ask. But Patience, to prevent
That murmur, soon replies, "God doth not need
Either man's work or his own gifts. Who best
Bear his mild yoke, they serve him best. His state
Is kingly: thousands at his bidding speed,
And post o'er land and ocean without rest;
They also serve who only stand and wait.
- John Milton (1608-1674)

Where ignorance is our master,
there is no possibility of real peace.
- Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama

If a man empties his purse into his head,
no man can take it away from him.
An investment in knowledge always pays the best interest.
- Benjamin Franklin

"To know" is to know that you know nothing.
That is the meaning of true knowledge.
- Confucius

It ain't what you don't know that gets you into trouble.
It's what you know for sure that just ain't so.
- Mark Twain (attributed)

The greater our knowledge increases
the more our ignorance unfolds.
- John F. Kennedy

It is the province of knowledge to speak,
and it is the privilege of wisdom to listen.
- Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

We know nothing at all.
All our knowledge is but the knowledge of schoolchildren.
The real nature of things we shall never know.
- Albert Einstein

Whoever loves instruction loves knowledge,
but he who hates correction is stupid.
- Anonymous

Whoever undertakes to set himself up
as a judge of Truth and Knowledge
is shipwrecked by the laughter of the gods.
- Albert Einstein

Knowledge is happiness, because to have knowledge -
broad, deep knowledge - is to know true ends from false,
and lofty things from low.
- Helen Keller

To acquire knowledge, one must study;
but to acquire wisdom, one must observe.
- Marilyn vos Savant

When I examine myself and my methods of thought,
I come to the conclusion that the gift of fantasy
has meant more to me than
any talent for absorbing positive knowledge.
- Albert Einstein

All Knowledge is Divided into Three Domains:
"What We Know",
"What We Know That We Don't Know", and
"What We Don't Know That We Don't Know."
- Werner Erhard

Those who have knowledge, don't predict.
Those who predict, don't have knowledge.
- Lao Tzu

Uncertainty that comes from knowledge
(knowing what you don't know)
is different from uncertainty coming from ignorance.
- Isaac Asimov

Beware of false knowledge;
it is more dangerous than ignorance.
- George Bernard Shaw

The gift of fantasy has meant more to me
than my talent for absorbing positive knowledge.
- Albert Einstein

The greatest obstacle to discovery is not ignorance -
it is the illusion of knowledge.
- Daniel J. Boorstin

Science gives man knowledge, which is power;
religion gives man wisdom, which is control.
- Martin Luther King, Jr.

The true sign of intelligence
is not knowledge but imagination.
- Albert Einstein

To be conscious that you are ignorant
is a great step to knowledge.
- Benjamin Disraeli

The possession of knowledge does not
kill the sense of wonder and mystery.
There is always more mystery.
- Anais Nin

The difference between a successful person and others
is not a lack of strength,
not a lack of knowledge,
but rather a lack of will.
- Vince Lombardi

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