Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Quotes

Beauty is momentary in the mind -- The fitful tracing of a portal; But in the flesh it is immortal. The body dies; the body's beauty lives. So evenings die, in their green going, A wave, interminably flowing.

When the ship goes down, the waves very quickly roll over the top of it, and attention shifts elsewhere. It's just the natural order of things in TV - in life - and is as it should be.

These flowers, which were splendid and sprightly, waking in the dawn of the morning, in the evening will be a pitiful frivolity, sleeping in the cold night's arms.

I like the ephemeral thing about theatre, every performance is like a ghost - it's there and then it's gone.

Flowers are without hope. Because hope is tomorrow and flowers have no tomorrow.

All that's bright must fade, The brightest still the fleetest; All that's sweet was made But to be lost when sweetest.

It's a moment that I'm after, a fleeting moment, but not a frozen moment.

The beauty of the world, which is so soon to perish, has two edges, one of laughter, one of anguish, cutting the heart asunder.

Aesthetic experiences are powerful, to be sure, and probably inescapable, but Nature will not remain effective for very long.

Nothing is forever in the Theatre. Whatever it is, it's here, it flares up, burns hot and then its gone.

As photographers, we live through things so swiftly. All our experience and training is focused toward snatching off the highlights... That all significant perfect moment, so essential to capture, is often highly perishable. There may be little opportunity to probe deeper.

Though nature is constantly beautiful, she does not exhibit her highest powers of beauty constantly, for then they would satiate us and pall upon our senses. It is necessary to their appreciation that they should be rarely shown. Her finest touches are things which must be watched for; her most perfect passages of beauty are the most evanescent.

I see the rainbow in the sky, the dew upon the grass; I see them, and I ask not why they glimmer or they pass. With folded arms I linger not to call them back; 'twere vain: In this, or in some other spot, I know they'll shine again.

... and because it was a drunken perception, it was perfect, entire, and lasted about half a second.

The rainbow is elusive, and its colors but the illumination of tears.

The rose that lives its little hour Is prized beyone the sculpted flower.

Perfect moments, especially when they verge on the sublime have the grave disadvantage of being very short lived, which in fact, being obvious, we would not need to mention were it not that they have a still greater disadvantage, which is that we do not know what to do once they are over.

Or like the snow falls in the river, A moment white-then melts for ever . . .

Natural beauty is essentially temporary and sad, hence the impression of obscene mockery which artificial flowers give us.

All merely graceful attributes are usually the most evanescent.

We delight in the mere sight of the delicate glow of fading rays clinging to the surface of a dusky wall, there to live out what little life remains to them.

And you're sorry that the ephemeral beauty has faded so rapidly, so irretrievably, that it flashed so deceptively and pointlessly before your eyes - you're sorry, for you didn't even have time to fall in love.