Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

“Daring ideas are like chessmen moved forward; they may be beaten, but they may start a winning game.”

“The soul that sees beauty may sometimes walk alone.”

“Beauty is a manifestation of secret natural laws, which otherwise would have been hidden from us forever.”

“In nature we never see anything isolated, but everything in connection with something else which is before it, beside it, under it and over it.”

“Behavior is the mirror in which everyone shows their image.”

“Man is made by his belief. As he believes, so he is.”

“There is nothing in which people more betray their character than in what they laugh at.”

“One must ask children and birds how cherries and strawberries taste.”

“It is not doing the thing we like to do, but liking the thing we have to do, that makes life blessed.”

“A clever man commits no minor blunders.”

“Plunge boldly into the thick of life, and seize it where you will, it is always interesting.”

“We will burn that bridge when we come to it.”

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

“Wood burns because it has the proper stuff in it; and a man becomes famous because he has the proper stuff in him.”

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

“Every step of life shows much caution is required.”

“The formation of one's character ought to be everyone's chief aim.”

“Life is the childhood of our immortality.”

“Let everyone sweep in front of his own door, and the whole world will be clean.”

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