Quotes by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Seize this very minute; what you can do, or dream you can, begin it; Boldness has genius, power and magic in it.

Architecture is frozen music.

Quite often, as life goes on, when we feel completely secure as we go on our way, we suddenly notice that we are trapped in error, that we have allowed ourselves to be taken in by individuals, by objects, have dreamt up an affinity with them which immediately vanishes before our waking eye; and yet we cannot tear ourselves away, held fast by some power that seems incomprehensible to us.  Sometimes, however, we become fully aware and realize that error as well as truth can move and spur us on to action.

Whoever wishes to keep a secret must hide the fact that he possesses one.

Human life—everybody lives it, but only to a few is it known.

What is the best government? – That which teaches us to govern ourselves.

Thinking is easy, acting is difficult, and to put one's thoughts into action is the most difficult thing in the world

Basic characteristics of an individual organism: to divide, to unite, to merge into the universal, to abide in the particular, to transform itself, to define itself, and as living things tend to appear under a thousand conditions, to arise and vanish, to solidify and melt, to freeze and flow, to expand and contract. Since these effects occur together, any or all may occur at the same moment.

True observers of nature, although they may think differently, will still agree that everything that is, everything that is observable as a phenomenon, can only exhibit itself in one of two ways. It is either a primal polarity that is able to unify, or it is a primal unity that is able to divide. The operation of nature consists of splitting the united or uniting the divided; this is the eternal movement of systole and diastole of the heartbeat, the inhalation and exhalation of the world in which we live, act, and exist."

A man sees in the world what he carries in his heart.