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Napoleon affords us an example of the danger of elevating one's self to the absolute, and sacrificing everything to the carrying out of an idea.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

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Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Age: 82 †
Born: 1749
Born: August 22
Died: 1832
Died: March 22
Aphorist
Art Critic
Art Theorist
Autobiographer
Botanist
Composer
Diarist
Diplomat
Jurist
Lawyer
Librarian
Librettist
Literary
Frankfurt/Main
Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
Goethe
goethe
johann wolfgang von goethe
joh. wolfg. von goethe
j. w. von goethe
Sacrifice
Elevating
Danger
Affords
Example
Napoleon
Idea
Sacrificing
Ideas
Carrying
Everything
Absolutes
Self
Absolute
Acceptance

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A person places themselves on a level with the ones they praise.
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Everything that we call Invention or Discovery in the higher sense of the word is the serious exercise and activity of an original feeling for truth, which, after a long course of silent cultivation, suddenly flashes out into fruitful knowledge.
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What people call the spirit of the times is mostly their own spirit in which the times mirror themselves.
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Truth is a torch, but a huge one, and so it is only with blinking eyes what we all of us try to get past it, in actual terror of being burnt.
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Every bird has its decoy, and every man is led and misled in his own peculiar way.
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Every author in some way portrays himself in his works, even if it be against his will.
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Against great advantages in another, there are no means of defending ourselves except love.
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The theater has often been at variance with the pulpit they ought not to quarrel. How much is it to be wished that in both the celebration of nature and of God were intrusted to none but men of noble minds.
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The angles even Draw strength from gazing on its glance, Though none its meaning fathom may The world's unwither'd countenance Is bright as at creation's day.
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You will find the most pronounced hatred of other nations on the lowest cultural levels. There is, though, a level where the hatred disappears completely and where one so to speak stands above the nations and where one experiences fortune or misfortune of a neighboring country as if they had happened to one's own.
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In politics people throw themselves, as on a sickbed, from one side to the other in the belief they will lie more comfortably.
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Mediocrity has no greater consolation than in the thought that genius is not immortal.
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Is it life, I ask, is it even prudence, To bore thyself and bore the students?
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Great endowments often announce themselves in youth in the form of singularity and awkwardness.
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I have found a paper of mine among some others in which I call architecture 'petrified music.' Really there is something in this the tone of mind produced by architecture approaches the effect of music.
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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.
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Whatever liberates our spirit, without also giving us mastery over ourselves, is destructive.
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He who enjoys doing and enjoys what he has done is happy.
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To act is easy, to think is hard to act according to our thought is troublesome.
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Man's highest merit always is, as much as possible, to rule external circumstances and as little as possible to let himself be ruled by them.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe