Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Quotes
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Law is mighty, mightier necessity.
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Let the noble man Be generous and good, Tirelessly achieving What is just and useful: Let him be a model For those beings whom he surmises.
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We are forced to participate in the games of life before we can possibly learn how to use the options in the rules governing them.
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Hypotheses are only the pieces of scaffolding which are erected round a building during the course of construction, and which are taken away as soon as the edifice is completed.
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We all walk in mysteries. We are surrounded by an atmosphere about which we still know nothing at all.
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Die Wahrheit widerspricht unserer Natur, der Irrthum nicht, und zwar aus einem sehr einfachen Grunde: die Wahrheit fordert, daß wir uns für beschränkt erkennen follen, der Irrthum schmeichelt uns. wir seien auf ein- oder die andere Weise unbegränzt.
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The force of a language does not consist of rejecting what is foreign but of swallowing it.
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Zwey Seelen wohnen, ach! in meiner Brust.
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People will allow their faults to be shown them; they will let themselves be punished for them; they will patiently endure many things because of them; they only become impatient when they have to lay them aside.
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Meine Ruh' ist hin,Mein Herz ist schwer.
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Life is too short to drink bad wine.
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Neuere Poeten tun viel Wasser in die Tinte.
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Nicht vor Irrthum zu bewahren, ist die Pflicht des Menschen erziehers; sondern den Irrenden zu leiten, ja ihn seinen Irrthum aus vollen Bechern ausschlürfen zu lassen, das ist Weisheit der Lehrer. Wer seinen Irrthum nur kostet, hält lange damit Haus; er freuet sich dessen als eines seltenen Glücks; aber wer ihn ganz erschöpft, der muß ihn kennenlernen.
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Each has his own happiness in his hands, as the artist handles the rude clay he seeks to reshape it into a figure; yet it is the same with this art as with all others: only the capacity for it is innate; the art itself must be learned and painstakingly practiced.
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Happy the man who early learns the wide chasm that lies between his wishes and his powers.
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Fools and wise men are equally harmless. It is the half-fools and half-wise that are dangerous.
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One is never satisfied with a portrait of a person that one knows.
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Mountains cannot be surmounted except by winding paths.
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The art of governing is a great metier, requiring the whole man, and it is therefore not well for a ruler to have too strong tendencies for other affairs.
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I do not know myself, and God forbid that I should.
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It used to happen, and still happens, to me to take no pleasure in a work of art at the first sight of it, because it is too much for me; but if I suspect any merit in it, I try to get at it; and then I never fail to make the most gratifying discoveries--to find new qualities in the work itself and new faculties in myself.
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Mozart is a human incarnation of the divine force of creation.
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The society of women is the element of good manners.
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I hate all explanations; they who make them deceive either themselves or the other party,-generally both.