Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Quotes About Duty

• What then is your duty? What the day demands.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Demand, Duty, Obligation

• How can we learn self-knowledge? Never by taking thought but rather by action. Try to do your duty and you'll soon discover what you're like.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Happiness, Self, Trying

• All ages have said and repeated that one should strive to know one's self. This is a strange demand which no one up to now has measured up to and, strictly considered, no one should. With all their study and effort, people are directed to what is outside, to the world about them, and they are kept busy coming to know this and to master it to the extent that their purposes require. . . . How can you come to know yourself? Never by thinking, always by doing. Try to do your duty, and you'll know right away what you amount to. And what is your duty? Whatever the day calls for.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Thinking, Self, People

• Love can do much, but duty more.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Love, Duty, Can Do

• If each one does their duty as an individual and if each one works in their own proper vocation, it will be right with the whole.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Doe, Management, Individual

• Do the duty which lies nearest to thee.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Lying, Thee, Duty

• If you lay duties upon people and give them no rights, you must pay them well.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Rights, People, Giving

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (2015). “Maxims and Reflections”, p.82, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

• Duty is the demand of the hour.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Demand, Hours, Duty

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, John Stuart Blackie (1883). “The Wisdom of Goethe”, Edinburgh, W. Blackwood

• But what is your duty? What the day demands.
  [Ger., Was aber ist deine Pflicht? Die Forderung des Tages.]

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Demand, Duty, Dies

• How can we know ourselves? Never by reflection, but only through action. Begin at once to do your duty and immediately you will know what is inside you.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Reflection, Action, Duty

• If one mistreats citizens of foreign countries, one infringes upon one's duty toward one's own subjects; for thus one exposes themto the law of retribution.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Country, Law, Citizens

• How can you come to know yourself? Never by thinking, always by doing. Try to do your duty, and you'll know right away what you amount to.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Thinking, Trying, Know Yourself

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