Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

Tolerance should really only be a passing attitude: it should lead to appreciation. To tolerate is to offend.

If there is confusion in your head and in your heart, what more do you want! A man who no longer loves and no longer errs should have himself buried straight away.

If I accept you as you are, I will make you worse; however, if I treat you as though you are what you are capable of becoming, I help you become that.

Colors are light's suffering and joy

And those whom once my song had cheered and gladdened, If still they live, rove through the world now saddened.

Once more I am a wanderer, a pilgrim, through the world. But what else are you?

Truth has to be repeated constantly, because Error also is being preached all the time, and not just by a few, but by the multitude. In the Press and Encyclopaedias, in Schools and Universities, everywhere Error holds sway, feeling happy and comfortable in the knowledge of having Majority on its side.

I am part of the part that once was everything, Part of the darkness which gave birth to light… Mephistopheles, from Faust.

Those who know nothing of foreign languages know nothing of their own.

Everyone is deceived in his hopes, cheated in his expectations.

Just begin and the mind grows heated; continue, and the task will be completed!

Truth is contrary to our nature, not so error, and this for a very simple reason: truth demands that we should recognize ourselves as limited, error flatters us that, in one way or another, we are unlimited.

Does not man lack the force at the very point where he needs it most? And when he soars upward in joy, or sinks down in suffering, is not checked in both, is he not returned again to the dull, cold sphere of awareness, just when he was longing to lose himself in the fullness of the infinite.

Everything is hard before it is easy.

Man is not born to solve the problem of the universe, but to find out what he has to do; and to restrain himself within the limits of his comprehension.

Is this the destiny of man? Is he only happy before he has acquired his reason or after he has lost it?

What a torment it is to see so much loveliness passing and repassing before us, and yet not dare to lay hold of it!

In happy ignorance, I sighed for a world I did not know, where I hoped to find every pleasure and enjoyment which my heart could desire; and now, on my return from that wide world... how many disappointed hopes and unsuccessful plans have I brought back!

How many kings are governed by their ministers, how many ministers by their secretaries? Who, in such cases, is really the chief?

It is in vain that a man of sound mind and cool temper understands the condition of such a wretched being... He can no more communicate his own wisdom to him than a healthy man can instil his strength into the invalid by whose bedside he is seated.

Would you require a wretched being, whose life is slowly wasting under a lingering disease, to despatch himself at once by the stroke of a dagger? Does not the very disorder which consumes his strength deprive him of the courage to effect his deliverance?