Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Quotes About Purpose

• Be above it! Make the world serve your purpose, but do not serve it.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Purpose, Literature, World

• The work of art may have a moral effect, but to demand moral purpose from the artist is to make him ruin his work.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Art, Philosophy, History

• I have never looked at foreign countries or gone there but with the purpose of getting to know the general human qualities that are spread all over the earth in very different forms, and then to find these qualities again in my own country and to recognize and to further them.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Country, Travel, Quality

• Austere perseverance, hash and continuous... rarely fails of its purpose, for its silent power grows irresistible greater with time.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Perseverance, Power, Purpose

• 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

• There are but two roads that lead to an important goal and to the doing of great things: strength and perseverance. Strength is the lot of but a few privileged men; but austere perseverance, harsh and continuous, may be employed by the smallest of us and rarely fails of its purpose, for its silent power grows irresistibly greater with time.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Inspirational, Life, Perseverance

• 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

• Aptitudes are assumed, they should become accomplishments. That is the purpose of all education.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Education, Accomplishment, Purpose

• A purpose you impart is no longer your own.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Purpose, Impart

• Thus one can observe that those who proclaim piety as their goal and purpose usually turn into hypocrites.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Hypocrite, Goal, Purpose

• Secrecy has many advantages, for when you tell someone the purpose of any object right away, they often think there is nothing to it.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Thinking, Purpose, Persuasion

• 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”

• The longer I live, the more it grieves me to see man, who occupies his supreme place for the very purpose of imposing his will upon nature, and freeing himself and his from an outrageous necessity--to see him taken up with some false notion, and doing just the opposite of what he wants to do; and then, because the whole bent of his mind is spoilt, bungling miserably over everything.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Taken, Men, Grieving

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1893). “Maxims and Reflections”, p.32, Library of Alexandria

• Art is a severe business; most serious when employed in grand and sacred objects. The artist stands higher than art, higher than the object. He uses art for his purposes, and deals with the object after his own fashion.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Fashion, Art, Serious

• To the person with a firm purpose all men and things are servants.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Men, Purpose, Literature

• Wood burns because it has the proper stuff for that purpose in it; and a man becomes renowned because he has the necessary stuff in him. Renown is not to be sought, and all pursuit of it is vain. A person may, indeed, by skillful conduct and various artificial means, make a sort of name for himself; but if the inner jewel is wanting, all is vanity, and will not last a day.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Mean, Men, Vanity

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Johann Peter Eckermann, Frédéric Jacob Soret (1850). “Conversations of Goethe with Eckermann and Soret”, p.103

• War is in truth a disease in which the juices that serve health and maintenance are used for the sole purpose of nourishing something foreign, something at odds with nature.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  War, Odds, Purpose

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