Goethe Language Quotes & Sayings

Beauty is rather a light that plays over the symmetry of things than that symmetry itself. — Plotinus

A heart full of bitterness is a life full of sorrows. — Matshona Dhliwayo

The happiest man is the one who finds happiness at home. — Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

When one is polite in German, one lies. — Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

I curse all negative purism that tells me not to use a word from another language that either expresses something that my own language cannot or does that in a more delicate manner. — Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

Mathematicians are a kind of Frenchman. They translate into their own language whatever is said to them and forthwith the thing is utterly changed. — Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

Economic libertarians and Christian evangelicals, united by their common enemy, are strange bedfellows in today's Republican party, just as the two Georges - the archconservative Wallace and the uberliberal McGovern - found themselves in the same Democratic Party in 1972. — Steven Pinker

Everybody knows what's going on. Even if they don't watch it they know what's happening. — Carrie Underwood

I believe it could be shown in researches - which obviously cannot be gone into here - that when a culture is in its historical phase of growing toward unity, its language reflects the unity and power; whereas when a culture is in the process of change, dispersal and disintegration, the language likewise loses its power. "When I was eighteen, Germany was eighteen," said Goethe, referring not only to the fact that the ideals of his nation were then moving toward unity and power, but that the language, which was his vehicle of power as a writer, was also in that stage. In our day the study of semantics is of considerable value, to be sure, and is to be commended. But the disturbing question is why we have to talk so much about what words mean that, once we have learned each other's language, we have little time or energy left for communicating. — Rollo May

Don't reject something just because it seems strange. It's comfort that will kill you in the end. — Simon Morden

But alas, my dear child, we are the slaves of custom, the dupes of prejudice, and dare not stem the torrent of the opposing world, even though our judgments condemn our compliance! However, since the die is cast, we must endeavor to make the best of it. — Fanny Burney

In another study, chronic procrastinators who set a specific time to complete a task were eight times as likely to follow through. — Tony Schwartz

In some ways this was Goethe's greatest achievement: the search for the serial relationships in nature, emphasizing border experiences, the junctures where "the real joints of nature" are located, is most likely to reveal the process of change, development, organizing principles. This is also why it needed individuals who were both poet and scientist, who could combine "imagination, observation and thought in the act of language. — Peter Watson

All of us, just because we are able to talk, also believe we are able to talk about language. — Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

The force of a language does not consist of rejecting what is foreign but of swallowing it. — Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

I have to hold a meeting with the rising generation every evening, and that takes time. Henry can say, 'Twinkle, twinkle,' all himself, and Edward can repeat it after his father! Giants of genius! Paragons of erudition! — Adoniram Judson

How could he possibly explain himself to these people? They wanted to learn English for show-off social reasons, or to be able to read Aldous Huxley in the original. Whereas he had learned German simply and solely to be able to talk to his sex partners. For him, the entire German language - all the way from the keep-off-the-grass signs in the park to Goethe's stanza on the wall - was irradiated with sex. For him, the difference between a table and ein Tisch was that a table was the dining table in his mother's house and ein Tisch was ein Tisch in the Cosy Corner. * — Christopher Isherwood

Go to the place where the thing you wish to know is native; your best teacher is there. Where the thing you wish to know is so dominant that you must breathe its very atmosphere, there teaching is moat thorough, and learning is most easy. You acquire a language most readily in the country where it is spoken; you study mineralogy boat among miners; and so with everything else. — Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

He who does not know foreign languages does not know anything about his own. — Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

If you look for it, you can find something good about anybody. — Nora Roberts

The limits of my language are the limits of my universe. — Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

Mathematicians are like Frenchmen: whatever you say to them they translate into their own language and forthwith it is something entirely different. — Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

When translating one must proceed up to the intranslatable; only then one becomes aware of the foreign nation and the foreign tongue. — Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

I have a healthy sense of vanity. I like to look good for myself, which is what a lot of women say. I want to stay fit. — Thomas Haden Church

Du hast so viele Leben, wie du Sprachen sprichst. (You have as many lives as the number of languages you speak.) — Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

A man who is ignorant of foreign languages is also ignorant of his own language. — Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

If you don't know foreign languages, you don't know anything about your own. — Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

I never really drank coffee in college, but now I'm on my feet all day and out all night and can't believe it hasn't always been in my life. When morning comes I crave it. — Gail Simmons

Because everyone uses language to talk, everyone thinks they can talk about language. — Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

What must the English and French think of the language of our philosophers when we Germans do not understand it ourselves? — Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

What I've been developing is a vegan fast food chain and vegan food markets. — Heather Mills

All is foreseen, but freedom of choice is given. — Akiva Ben Joseph

When I was 14, and for the next four years, I was lifting and hauling 10-gallon milk cans full of milk. That will put muscles on you even if you're not trying. — Harmon Killebrew