Perfection is the measure of heaven, and the wish to be perfect the measure of man.

Every man hears only what he understands.

There is no surer way of evading the world than by Art; and no surer way of uniting with it than by Art.

If the word is not dead when it reaches the hearer, he murders it at once by a contradiction, a stipulation, a condition, a digression, an interruption, and all the thousand tricks of conversation.

I have always paid attention to the merits of my enemies, and found it an advantage.

When Nature begins to reveal her open secret to a man, he feels an irresistible longing for her worthiest interpreter, Art.

Every idea appears at first as a strange visitor, and when it begins to be realized, it is hardly distinguishable from fantasy.

A man must cling to the belief that the incomprehensible is comprehensible; otherwise he would not try to fathom it.

The dignity of Art appears perhaps most conspicuously in Music; for in Music there is no material to be deducted. It is wholly form and intrinsic value, and it raises and ennobles all that it expresses.

To recognize God where and as he reveals himself is the only true bliss on earth.

The Beautiful is a manifestation of secret laws of nature, which, without its presence, would never have been revealed.

Nothing is more frightful than imagination without taste.

The greatest piece of folly is that every man thinks himself compelled to hand down what people think they have known.

The written word has this advantage, that it lasts and can await the time when it is allowed to take effect.

Tolerance should, strictly speaking, be only a passing mood; it ought to lead to acknowledgment and appreciation. To tolerate a person is to affront him.

What a day it is when we must envy the men in their graves.

What is called fashion is the tradition of the moment. All tradition carries with it a certain necessity for people to put themselves on a level with it.

If one has not read the newspapers for some months and then reads them all together, one sees, as one never saw before, how much time is wasted with this kind of literature.

Power should act and not talk.

In the history of science and throughout the whole course of its progress we see certain epochs following one another more or less rapidly. Some important view is expressed, it may be original or only revived; sooner or later it receives recognition; fellow workers spring up; the outcome of it finds its way into the schools; it is taught and handed down; and we observe, unhappily, that it does not in the least matter whether the view be true or false. In either case its course is the same; in either case it comes in the end to be a mere phrase, a lifeless word stamped on the memory.

Opponents fancy they refute us when they repeat their own opinion and pay no attention to ours.

A man avails himself of the truth so long as it is serviceable; but he seizes on what is false with a passionate eloquence as soon as he can make a momentary use of it.

The historian's duty is to separate the true from the false, the certain from the uncertain, and the doubtful from that which cannot be accepted.

First let a man teach himself, and then he will be taught by others.

With the growth of knowledge our ideas must from time to time be organized afresh. The change takes place usually in accordance with new maxims as they arise, but it always remains provisional.

All practical men try to bring the world under their hands; all thinkers, under their heads.

Vanity is a desire of personal glory, the wish to be appreciated, honoured, and run after, not because of one's personal qualities, merits, and achievements, but because of one's individual existence. At best, therefore, it is a frivolous beauty whim it befits.

Superstition is the poetry of life.

Theories are usually the over-hasty efforts of an impatient understanding that would gladly be rid of phenomena, and so puts in their place pictures, notions, nay, often mere words.

Everything that we call Invention or Discovery in the higher sense of the word is the serious exercise and activity of an original feeling for truth, which, after a long course of silent cultivation, suddenly flashes out into fruitful knowledge.

The ignorant start questions which have been already answered thousands of years ago by the wise.

JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE, attributed, Day's Collacon

Originality provokes originality.

JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE, attributed, Day's Collacon

Originality! What do they mean by it? The action of the world upon us commences with the hour of our birth, and ends only with our death; it is here, and there, and everywhere. There is nothing we can claim as our own but energy, strength, and volition; very little of me would be left, if I could but say what I owe to my great predecessors and contemporaries.

JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE, attributed, Day's Collacon

To a new truth there is nothing more hurtful than an old error.

It is with books as with new acquaintances. At first we are highly delighted, if we find a general agreement--if we are pleasantly moved on any of the chief sides of our existence. With a closer acquaintance differences come to light; and then reasonable conduct mainly consists in not shrinking back at once, as may happen in youth, but in keeping firm hold of the things in which we agree, and being quite clear about the things in which we differ, without on that account desiring any union.

It is difficult to know how to treat the errors of the age. If a man oppose them, he stands alone; if he surrender to them, they bring him neither joy nor credit.

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