Quotes by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

There is nothing more frightening than active ignorance.
--Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

You give me space to belong to myself yet without separating me from your own life. May it all turn out to your happiness.
--Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Mathematics has the completely false reputation of yielding infallible conclusions. Its infallibility is nothing but identity. Two times two is not four, but it is just two times two, and that is what we call four for short. But four is nothing new at all. And thus it goes on and on in its conclusions, except that in the higher formulas the identity fades out of sight.
--Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

The coward threatens when he is safe.
--Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Thinking is more interesting than knowing, but less interesting than looking.
--Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

I do not know myself and God forbid that I should.
--Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

A false hypothesis is better than none at all. The fact that it is false does not matter so much. However, if it takes root, if it is generally assumed, if it becomes a kind of credo admitting no doubt or scrutiny--that is the real evil, one which has endured through the centuries.
--Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

It is not doing the thing we like to do, but liking the thing we have to do, that makes life blessed.
--Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

The sum which two married people owe to one another defies calculation. It is an infinite debt, which can only be discharged through all eternity.
--Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

To know someone with whom you feel there is understanding in spite of distances or thoughts unexpressed -- that can make of this earth a garden.
--Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

It has been said that figures rule the world. Maybe. But I am sure that figures show us whether it is being ruled well or badly.
--Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

The eternal feminine draws us upward.
--Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Theory is gray, but the golden tree of life is green.
--Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Mathematicians are like Frenchmen: whatever you say to them they translate into their own language and forthwith it is something entirely different.
--Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

He who cannot draw on 3000 years is living hand to mouth.
--Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Correction does much, but encouragement does more.
--Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Mathematicians are like Frenchmen: whatever you say to them they translate into their own language and forthwith it is something entirely different.
--Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic.
--Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

A man should hear a little music, read a little poetry and see a fine picture every day of his life in order that worldly cares may not obliterate the sense of the beautiful which God has implanted in the human soul.
--Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Life is the childhood of our immortality.
--Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Where there is much light there is also much shadow.
--Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free.
--Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Love is an ideal thing, marriage a real thing; a confusion of the real with the ideal never goes unpunished.
--Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

That is the true season of love, when we believe that we alone can love, that no one could have loved so before us, and that no one will love in the same way as us.
--Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

What we do not understand we do not possess.
--Johann Wolfgang von Goethe