Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Quotes

Truly, this world can go on without us, if we would but think so.

If your ego starts out, 'I am important, I am big, I am special,' you're in for some disappointments when you look around at what we've discovered about the universe. No, you're not big. No, you're not. You're small in time and in space. And you have this frail vessel called the human body that's limited on Earth.

I see people every day who think they're the be all and end all of the industry. I've seen so many people come and go, but the industry doesn't revolve around one person.

I don't find myself that interesting as a human being, so I don't really think that much of what I say or do warrants being recorded.

Each man is everything to himself, for with his death everything is dead for him. That is why each of us thinks he is everything to everyone. We must not judge nature by ourselves, but by its own standards.

I had fooled myself into thinking that I was something important to the rest of the world.

You are not special. You are not a beautiful or unique snowflake. You're the same decaying organic matter as everything else.

Whenever you think that you are getting too big for the people around you, remember all that separates you from the guy sitting next to you is a little piece of gristle in your throat.

Just when you begin thinking of yourself as memorable, you run into someone who can't even remember having met you

When a person feels disposed to over estimate his own importance, let him remember that mankind got along very well before his birth, and that in all probability they will they will get along very well after his death.

I'm not the kind of guy that really thinks I'm a celebrity or feels that I'm important or anything like that.

You're not the center of the universe, you know.

If you're not humble, life will visit humbleness upon you.

I could disappear from the face of the earth, and the world would go on moving without the slightest twinge. Things were tremendously complicated, to be sure, but one thing was clear: no one needed me.

When you have any kind of success in life, that's like the most dangerous moment that you're in because you're going to tend to think wow, I can just keep repeating what I've done. I'm a great person. People love me. All of the sudden they're giving me all of this attention. You get drunk on it and you lose your sense of balance and your sense of detachment. I know it's happened to me.

A man doesn't begin to attain wisdom until he recognizes he is no longer indispensable.

No matter how many people celebrate your gifts, don't ever think that you are more important to them than your gift is to them. This is why many people fail: They fail because they think that people came to follow them.

There are days when I'll wake up and think, oh, I've really been something. You know, it won't be the same without me. And then there are days when I wake up and I say, 'Don't kid yourself. Your contribution was minimal. You changed very little. Everything you hated prospered'.

To think that the ruler of the universe will run to my assistance and bend the laws of nature for me is the height of arrogance.

Humility is not thinking meanly of oneself, but rather it means not thinking of oneself at all.

Pride does not look up to God and care about what is right. It looks sideways to man and argues who is right. Pride is manifest in the spirit of contention. Was it not through pride that the devil became the devil? Christ wanted to serve. The devil wanted to rule. Christ wanted to bring men to where He was. The devil wanted to be above men. Christ removed self as the force in His perfect life. It was not my will, but thine be done

The plain truth is we are going to die. Here I am, a teeny spec surrounded by boundless space and time, arguing with the whole of creation, shaking my fist, sputtering, growing even eloquent at times, and then-poof! I am gone. Swept off once and for all. I think that is very, very funny.

After Stand By Me came out, people were telling me, 'You're so good,' 'You're going to be a star,' and things like that. You can't think about it. If you take it the wrong way, you can really get high on yourself. People get so lost when that happens to them. They may think they have everything under control, but everything is really out of control. Their lives are totally in pieces.

In truth, we're all just pottering, filling the time that we have here, only we like to make ourselves feel bigger by compiling lists of importance.

It is a good rule in life to be wary of the company of people who think of themselves in the third person, no matter how well justified they might seem to be in doing so.