Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Quotes

Sin writes histories, goodness is silent.

It is not easy to do something good, but it is extremely difficult to do something bad.

Piety is the most solid goodness, and the vilest of what is evil is vice.

Who will dare to write a history of human goodness?

The eternal conflict of good and the best with bad and the worst is on.

Only a writer who has the sense of evil can make goodness readable.

A good man can be stupid and still be good. But a bad man must have brains.

Evil is always possible. Goodness is a difficulty.

I think that fiction is an excellent place for us to struggle with questions of good and evil, and humanity and inhumanity.

The wicked are wicked, no doubt, and they go astray and they fall, and they come by their deserts: but who can tell the mischief which the very virtuous do?

To me, evil comes when you have a choice between that and good, and you choose the wrong way.

And one of the elders of the city , said , speak to us of good and evil. And he answered : You are good in countless ways , and you are not evil when you are not good .

For good is simple, evil manifold.

Le Chiffre was serving a wonderful purpose, a really vital purpose, perhaps the best and highest purpose of all. By his evil existence, which foolishly I have helped to destroy, he was creating a norm of badness by which, and by which alone, an opposite norm of goodness could exist. We were privileged, in our short knowledge of him, to see and estimate his wickedness and we emerge from the acquaintanceship better and more virtuous men.

Virtue is persecuted by the wicked more than it is loved by the good.

Evil comes at leisure like the disease. Good comes in a hurry like the doctor.

I have never seen one who really loves goodness or one who really hates wickedness. One who really loves goodness will not place anything above it. One who really hates wickedness will practice goodness in such a way that wickedness will have no chance to get at him. Is there anyone who has devoted his whole strength to doing good for even as long as a single day? I have not seen anyone give up such an attempt because he had not the strength to go on. Perhaps there is such a case, but I have never seen it.

Goodness is equally hateful to the wicked, as vice is to the virtuous.

Sin makes its own hell, and goodness its own heaven.

I never wonder to see men wicked, but I often wonder to see them not ashamed.

Evil is not something superhuman, it's something less than human.

Goodness is the only investment that never fails.

There is no dignity in wickedness, whether in purple or rags; and hell is a democracy of devils, where all are equals.

I'm very interested in good and evil and the moral natures of people.

Wickedness never did, never does, never will bring us happiness.