Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Quotes
Quotes to Explore
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The deed is everything, the glory nothing.
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There is no crime of which I do not deem myself capable.
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Der Handelnde ist immer gewissenlos; es hat niemand Gewissen als der Betrachtende.
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Money lost, something lost. Honor lost, much lost. Courage lost, everything lost-better you were never born.
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Why look for conspiracy when stupidity can explain so much.
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We must not hope to be mowers, And to gather the ripe gold ears, Unless we have first been sowers And water the furrows with tears. It is not just as we take it, This mystical world of ours, Life's field will yield as we make it A harvest of thorns or of flowers.
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Ohne Hast, aber ohne Rast. - Without haste, but without rest.
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Choose well. Your choice is brief, and yet endless.
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If you've never eaten while crying you don t know what life tastes like.
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The absence of temptation is the absence of virtue.
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To know of someone here and there whom we accord with, who is living on with us, even in silence - this makes our earthly ball a peopled garden.
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Beauty is at once the ultimate principle and the highest aim of art.
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There is nothing more frightful than for a teacher to know only what his scholars are intended to know.
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The greatest step forward would be to see that everything factual is already theory. The blueness of the sky reveals the basic lawof chromatics. Don't look for anything behind the phenomena, they themselves are the doctrine.
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Truth has to be repeated constantly, because Error also is being preached all the time, and not just by a few, but by the multitude. In the Press and Encyclopaedias, in Schools and Universities, everywhere Error holds sway, feeling happy and comfortable in the knowledge of having Majority on its side.
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To rule is easy, to govern difficult.
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At the moment of commitment the entire universe conspires to assist you.
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Our modern wars make many unhappy while they last and none happy when they are over.
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Hatred is something peculiar. You will always find it strongest and most violent where there is the lowest degree of culture.
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If I love you, what business is it of yours?
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Great necessity elevates man, petty necessity casts him down.
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I have come to the frightening conclusion that I am the decisive element. It is my personal approach that creates the climate. It is my daily mood that makes the weather....In all situations, it is my response that decides whether a crisis is escalated or de-escalated, and a person is humanized or is dehumanized.
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Kindness is the golden thread that holds society together.
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The work of art may have a moral effect, but to demand moral purpose from the artist is to make him ruin his work.