Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Quotes About Children

• There are two things children should get from their parents: roots and wings.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Baby, Children, Wings

• There are two things parents should give their children roots and wings. Roots to give them bearing and a sense of belonging, but also wings to help free them from constraints and prejudices and give them other ways to travel (or rather, to fly).

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Children, Wings, Two

• If children grew up according to early indications, we should have nothing but geniuses.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Children, Should Have, Childhood

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, John Oxenford (2013). “The Auto-Biography of Goethe: Truth and Poetry: From My Own Life”, p.54, Cambridge University Press

• Too many parents make life hard for their children by trying, too zealously, to make it easy for them.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Inspirational, Motivational, Children

• There are only two lasting bequests we can hope to give our children. One of these is roots, the other, wings.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Family, Inspiring, Children

• Age merely shows what children we remain.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Children, Age, Literature

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1984). “Faust”

• One must ask children and birds how cherries and strawberries taste.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Summer, Nature, Children

• Unlike grown ups, children have little need to deceive themselves.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Children, Honesty, Deception

• We can't form our children on our own concepts; we must take them and love them as God gives them to us.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Love, Baby, Children

  Hermann and Dorothea pt. 3 (1797)

• I treat my heart like a sick child and gratify its every fancy

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Children, Heart, Sick

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, David E. Wellbery (1988). “The Sorrows of Young Werther ; Elective Affinities ; Novella”, p.7, Princeton University Press

• You can’t, if you can’t feel it, if it never Rises from the soul, and sways The heart of every single hearer, With deepest power, in simple ways. You’ll sit forever, gluing things together, Cooking up a stew from other’s scraps, Blowing on a miserable fire, Made from your heap of dying ash. Let apes and children praise your art, If their admiration’s to your taste, But you’ll never speak from heart to heart, Unless it rises up from your heart’s space.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Art, Children, Simple

• Children, love one another, and if that is not possible-at least try to put up with one another.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Children, Trying, Love One Another

• The worst is that the very hardest thinking will not bring thoughts. They must come like good children of God and cry, "Here we are." You expend effort and energy thinking hard. Then, after you have given up, they come sauntering in with their hands in their pockets. If the effort had not been made to open the door, however, who knows when they could have come.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Children, Thinking, Hands

• Age does not make us childish, as some say; it finds us true children.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Happiness, Time, Children

• The child, offered the mother's breast, Will not in the beginning grab it; But soon it clings to it with zest. And thus at wisdom's copious breasts You'll drink each day with greater zest.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Mother, Wisdom, Children

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Walter Arnold Kaufmann (1963). “Goethe's Faust: part one and sections from part two”, Anchor

• A creation of importance can only be produced when its author isolates himself, it is a child of solitude.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Inspirational, Children, Being Alone

• No one is willing to believe that adults too, like children, wander about this earth in a daze and, like children, do not know where they come from or where they are going, act as rarely as they do according to genuine motives, and are as thoroughly governed as they are by biscuits and cake and the rod.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Children, Believe, Cake

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (2006). “The Sorrows of Young Werther”, p.32, Penguin UK

• I am amazed to see how deliberately I have entangled myself step by step. To have seen my position so clearly, and yet to have acted so like a child!

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Children, Steps, Amazed

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (2016). “THE SORROWS OF YOUNG WERTHER (Literary Classics Series): Historical Romance Novel”, p.27, e-artnow

• Age childish makes, they say, but 'tis not true;
  We're only genuine children still in Age's season.
  [Ger., Das Alter macht nicht kindisch, wie man spricht,
  Es findet uns nur noch als wahre Kinder.]

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Children, Men, Age

• The bad thing is that thinking about thought doesn't help at all; one has to have it from nature so that the good ideas appear before us like free children of God calling to us: Here we are.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Children, Thoughtful, Thinking

• Children, like dogs, have so sharp and fine a scent that they detect and hunt out everything--the bad before all the rest. They also know well enough how this or that friend stands with their parents; and as they practice no dissimulation whatever, they serve as excellent barometers by which to observe the degree of favor or disfavor at which we stand with their parents.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Dog, Children, Practice

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Johann Peter Eckermann (2014). “Conversations of Goethe with Johann Peter Eckermann”, p.435, Ravenio Books

• One spares old people just as one spares children.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Children, People, Age

• Dispel not, the happy delusions of children.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Children, Delusion

• Children can scarcely be fashioned to meet with our likes and our purpose. Just as God did us give them, so must we hold them and love them, nurture and teach them to fullness and leave them to be what they are.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Children, Giving, And Love

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1963). “Goethe's world view: presented in his reflections and maxims”

• In praising or loving a child, we love and praise not that which is, but that which we hope for.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Children, Praise

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