What I possess I would gladly retain, change amuses the mind, yet scarcely profits.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Quotes
The thinker makes a great mistake when he asks after cause and effect. They both together make up the indivisible phenomena.
Treat a man as if he were what he ought to be and you help him becone what he is capable of being.
He who wishes to exert a useful influence must be careful to insult nothing. Let him not be troubled by what seems absurd, but concentrate his energies on the creation of what is good. He must not demolish, but build. He must raise temples where mankind may come and partake of the purest pleasure.
God could cause us considerable embarrassment by revealing all the secrets of nature to us: we should not know what to do for sheer apathy and boredom.
It is quite beyond me how anyone can believe God speaks to us in books and stories. If the world does not directly reveal to us our relationship to it, if our hearts fail to tell us what we owe ourselves and others, we shall assuredly not learn it from books, which are at best […]
Take care of your body with steadfast fidelity. The soul must see through these eyes alone, and if they are dim, the whole world is clouded.
We are so constituted that we believe the most incredible things; and, once they are engraved upon the memory, woe to him who would endeavor to erase them!
Behavior is a mirror in which every one displays his own image.
If you treat an individual as he is, he will stay as he is; but if you treat him as if he were what he ought to be and could be, he will become what he ought to be and could be.
