Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Quotes
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Association with women is the basis of good manners.
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Divide and rule, the politician cries; unite and lead, is watchword of the wise.
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Our wishes are presentiments of the abilities that lie in us, harbingers of what we will be able to accomplish.
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How many years must a man do nothing, before he can at all know what is to be done and how to do it!
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The art of living rightly is like all arts; it must be learned and practiced with incessant care.
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One never goes so far as when one doesn't know where one is going.
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I'm gazing at church and palace, ruin and column,Like a serious man making sensible use of a journey,But soon it will happen, and all will be one vast temple,Love's temple, receiving its new initiate.Though you're a whole world, Rome, still, without Love,The world isn't the world, and Rome can't be Rome.
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Es ist so gewiß als wunderbar, daß Wahrheit und Irrthum aus Einer Quelle entstehen; deßwegen man oft dem Irrthum nicht schaden darf, weil man zugleich der Wahrheit schadet.
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On the pinnacle of success man does not stand firm long.
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Sometimes I don't understand how another can love her, is allowed to love her, since I love her so completely myself, so intensely, so fully, grasp nothing, know nothing, have nothing but her!
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Amerika, du hast es besser-als unser Kontinent, der alte.
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Whoso shrinks from ideas ends by having nothing but sensations.
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Every second is of infinite value.
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An angel! Nonsense! Everybody so describes his mistress; and yet I find it impossible to tell you how perfect she is, or why she is so perfect: suffice it to say she has captivated all my senses.
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We are pantheists when we study nature, polytheists when we write poetry, monotheists in our morality.
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The main thing is to have a soul that loves the truth and harbours it where he finds it. And another thing: truth requires constant repetition, because error is being preached about us all the time, and not only by isolated individuals but by the masses. In the newspapers and encyclopedias, in schools and universities, everywhere error rides high and basks in the consciousness of having the majority on its side.
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The old lose one of the greatest privileges of man, for they are no longer judged by their contemporaries.
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Piety, like nobility, has its aristocracy.
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Collectors are happy people.
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The older I get the more I trust in the law according to which the rose and the lily bloom.
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Without my attempts in natural science, I should never have learned to know mankind such as it is. In nothing else can we so closely approach pure contemplation and thought, so closely observe the errors of the senses and of the understanding, the weak and strong points of character.
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The greatest happiness for the thinking person is to have explored the explorable and to venerate in equanimity that which cannotbe explored.
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English plays, Atrocious in content, Absurd in form, Objectionable in action, Execrable English Theatre.
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A true German can't stand the French, Yet willingly he drinks their wines.