Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Quotes

Life presents you with so many decisions. A lot of times, they're right in front of your face and they're really difficult, but we must make them.

Nothing is of greater importance in time of war than in knowing how to make the best use of a fair opportunity when it is offered.

Why cannot one always do, not only the right thing, but at the right time?

There’s only two times in life, there’s now and there’s too late.

Art is long, life is short; judgement difficult, opportunity transient.

Draw, Antonio; draw, Antonio; draw and don’t waste time.

I don't know whether this is the best of times or the worst of times, but I assure you it's the only time you've got. You can either sit on your expletive deleted or pick a daisy.

The time is a thing; you don't have so much time. A good trick is to try and think about a way to use material from one occupation for the other. It's like going through working a day job, this is so dumb to say, but you know how Julian Schnabel made those crockery paintings while he was working as a short-order cook? It's like that, using what is around, transforming that to create meaning and make art. Trying to take nothing and make... something.

The artist who gives up an hour of work for an hour of conversation with a friend knows that he is sacrificing a reality for something that does not exist.

Or is there no such thing as 'too late'? Is there only 'late' and is 'late' always better than 'never'? I don't know.

Young people in general - and young women in particular - need to understand that they cannot retrieve in their forties the opportunities they threw away in their twenties.

Summits are best at dealing with problems, where the need for action is urgent and the range of possible actions limited. They are less good at dealing with opportunities.

Right when I started getting solid was when I was offered a lot of writing work. And when The Ben Stiller Show was picked up, I realized there was no way for me to do stand-up three or four nights a week and run this television show with Ben. So that was the moment when I had to make a choice.

Don't think about making art, just get it done.

Directing is a mixture of compromise and perfectionism. When you lose the judgment of which is more important at any particular moment, you're time is over. They find you out and send you packing.

It's hard to say how time factors into your work, because sometimes things will come to you very quickly, but it will take years for the ideas to be gestating in your mind.

Time is very important to art and if you don't have the time to select, art goes out the window.

Generally you should act somewhere between P40 and P70, as I call it. Sometime after you have obtained 40 percent of all the information you are liable to get, start thinking in terms of making a decision. When you have about 70 percent of all the information, you probably ought to decide, because you may lose an opportunity in losing time.

Thought expands, but paralyzes; action animates, but narrows.

The right decision is the wrong decision if it's made too late.

It will never be a perfect time, you can only make time perfect.

If you have dreams you want to pursue, the time is now. There is no perfect time, and there is no better time. There is only the time you lose while you're making excuses.

I'd rather be sorry for something I had done than for something I didn't do.

It is no matter what you teach them first, any more than what leg you shall put into your breeches first. You may stand disputing which is best to put in first, but in the mean time your breech is bare. Sir, while you are considering which of two things you should teach your child first, another boy has learned them both.

The time to begin most things is ten years ago.