Johann Wolfgang von Goethe: Quotes about people

“It is the most foolish of all errors for young people of good intelligence to imagine that they will forfeit their originality if they acknowledge truth already acknowledged by others.”

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Der thörigste von allen Irrthümern ist, wenn junge gute Köpfe glauben, ihre Originalität zu verlieren, indem sie das Wahre anerkennen, was von andern schon anerkannt worden.
Maxim 254, trans. Stopp
Maxims and Reflections (1833)

People , Truth , Error , Imagination

“People should talk less and draw more. Personally, I would like to renounce speech altogether and, like organic nature, communicate everything I have to say visually.”

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Wir sprechen überhaupt viel zu viel. Wir sollten weniger sprechen und mehr zeichnen. Ich meinerseits möchte mir das Reden ganz abgewöhnen und wie die bildende Natur in lauter Zeichnungen fortsprechen.
Attributed to Goethe by Johannes Falk in Goethe aus näherm persönlichen Umgange dargestellt (1832). http://www.literatur-live.de/salon/_falk_goethe.pdf
Attributed

People , Communication , Nature , Drawing

“People say, “Artist, study nature!” But it is no small matter to develop what is noble out of what is common, beauty out of what lacks form.”

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Man sagt: „Studire, Künstler, die Natur!”
Es ist aber keine Kleinigkeit, aus dem Gemeinen das Edle, aus der Unform das Schöne zu entwickeln.
Maxim 191, trans. Stopp
Maxims and Reflections (1833)

People , Beauty , Nature , Study

“Among all peoples, the Greeks have dreamt life's dream most beautifully.”

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Unter allen Völkerschaften haben die Griechen den Traum des Lebens am schönsten geträumt.
Maxim 298, trans. Stopp
Variant translation by Saunders: Of all peoples the Greeks have dreamt the dream of life the best. (189)
Maxims and Reflections (1833)

Life , People , Dreams

“I have come to the frightening conclusion that I am the decisive element. It is my personal approach that creates the climate. It is my daily mood that makes the weather. I possess tremendous power to make life miserable or joyous. I can be a tool of torture or an instrument of inspiration, I can humiliate or humor, hurt or heal. In all situations, it is my response that decides whether a crisis is escalated or de-escalated, and a person is humanized or de-humanized. If we treat people as they are, we make them worse. If we treat people as they ought to be, we help them become what they are capable of becoming.”

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Widely attributed to Goethe, but also claimed to be a distortion of a passage by Haim Ginott.
Disputed

Life , People , Mood , Decision

“If some people hadn’t felt obliged to repeat what is untrue simply because they had at one point maintained it, they would have turned into quite different people.”

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Wenn mancher sich nicht verpflichtet fühlte, das Unwahre zu wiederholen, weil er’s einmal gefügt hat, fo wären es ganz andere Leute geworden.
Maxim 586, trans. Stopp
Maxims and Reflections (1833)

People

“Smoking stupefies a man, and makes him incapable of thinking or writing. It is only fit for idlers, people who are always bored, who sleep for a third of their lifetime, fritter away another third in eating, drinking, and other necessary or unnecessary affairs, and don’t know—though they are always complaining that life is so short—what to do with the rest of their time. Such lazy Turks find mental solace in handling a pipe and gazing at the clouds of smoke that they puff into the air; it helps them to kill time. Smoking induces drinking beer, for hot mouths need to be cooled down. Beer thickens the blood, and adds to the intoxication produced by the narcotic smoke. The nerves are dulled and the blood clotted. If they go on as they seem to be doing now, in two or three generations we shall see what these beer-swillers and smoke-puffers have made of Germany. You will notice the effect on our literature—mindless, formless, and hopeless; and those very people will wonder how it has come about. And think of the cost of it all! Fully 25,000,000 thalers a year end in smoke all over Germany, and the sum may rise to forty, fifty, or sixty millions. The hungry are still unfed, and the naked unclad. What can become of all the money? Smoking, too, is gross rudeness and unsociability. Smokers poison the air far and wide and choke every decent man, unless he takes to smoking in self-defence. Who can enter a smoker’s room without feeling ill? Who can stay there without perishing?”

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Heinrich Luden, Rueckblicke in mein Leben, Jena 1847
Attributed

Life , Money , People , Feeling

“If we treat people as they are, we make them worse. If we treat people as they ought to be, we help them become what they are capable of becoming.”

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

As quoted in Human Development : A Science of Growth (1961) by Justin Pikunas, p. 311; this might be based on a translation or paraphrase by Viktor Frankl, to whom it is also sometimes attributed.
:In Wilhelm Meister’s Lehrjahre (Book VIII, Chapter four) Goethe writes:
:“Wenn wir” sagtest Du, “die Menschen nur nehmen, wie sie sind, so machen wir sie schlechter; wenn wir sie behandeln als wären sie, was sie sein sollten, so bringen wir sie dahin, wohin sie zu bringen sind."
:Werke, Hamburger Ausgabe in 14 Bänden, Verlag C. H. Beck München, Herausgegeben von Erich Trunz
: Variant translations:
:*Treat people as if they were what they ought to be and you help them to become what they are capable of being.
::* As quoted in My Country Vol. 2, No. 3 (September 1968) by Litchfield Historical Society, p. 23
:* "‘When we take people,’ thou wouldst say, ‘merely as they are, we make them worse; when we treat them as if they were what they should be, we improve them as far as they can be improved.’"
::* This translation occurs in the Harvard Classics edition of Wilhem Meister's Apprenticeship, Book VIII, Chapter IV. Translation by Thomas Carlyle Bartelby Online Edition of 'Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship'. http://www.bartleby.com/314/804.html
Disputed

People , Help

“I have often felt a bitter sorrow at the thought of the German people, which is so estimable in the individual and so wretched in the generality. A comparison of the German people with other peoples arouses a painful feeling, which I try to overcome in every possible way.”

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Goethes Gespraeche (December 13, 1813)

Pain , People , Way , Feeling

“A noble person attracts noble people, and knows how to hold on to them.”

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Torquato Tasso

Torquato Tasso, Act I, sc. i (1790)

People , Personality

“I’m sorry for people who make a great to-do about the transitory nature of things and get lost in meditations of earthly nothingness. Surely we are here precisely so as to turn what passes into something that endures; but this is possible only if you can appreciate both.”

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Ich bedauere die Menschen, welche von der Vergänglichkeit der Dinge viel Wesens machen und sich in Betrachtung irdischer Nichtigkeit verlieren. Sind wir ja eben deßhalb da, um das Vergängliche unvergänglich zu machen; das kann ja nur dadurch geschehen, wenn man beides zu schätzen weiß.
Maxim 155, trans. Stopp
Maxims and Reflections (1833)

People , Nature

“The sum which two married people owe to one another defies calculation. It is an infinite debt, which can only be discharged through all eternity.”

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe book Elective Affinities

Bk. I, Ch. 9
Elective Affinities (1809)

People

“To know of someone here and there whom we accord with, who is living on with us, even in silence — this makes our earthly ball a peopled garden.”

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Bk. VII, Ch. 5
Wilhelm Meister's Lehrjahre (Apprenticeship) (1786–1830)

People , Silence

“People have to become really bad before they care for nothing but mischief, and delight in it.”

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Maxims and Reflections (1833)
Original: (de) Wenn die Menschen recht schlecht werden, haben sie keinen Anteil mehr als die Schadenfreude.