Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Quotes
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Divide and rule, a sound motto. Unite and lead, a better one.
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Whatever liberates our spirit, without also giving us mastery over ourselves, is destructive.
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In nature we never see anything isolated, but everything in connection with something else which is before it, beside it, under it and over it.
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Viewed from the summit of reason, all life looks like a malignant disease and the world like a madhouse.
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It matters little whether a man be mathematically or philologically or artistically cultivated, so he be but cultivated.
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No one would talk much in society, if he knew how often he misunderstands others.
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Beauty is a primeval phenomenon, which itself never makes its appearance, but the reflection of which is visible in a thousand different utterances of the creative mind, and is as various as nature herself.
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Every man must form himself as a particular being, seeking, however, to attain that general idea of which all mankind are constituents.
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The public wishes itself to be managed like a woman; one must say nothing to it except what it likes to hear.
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It is in human nature to relax, when not compelled by personal advantage or disadvantage.
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Amerika, du hast es besser-als unser Kontinent, der alte.
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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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Hope is the second soul of the unhappy.
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He who cannot draw on three thousand years is living from hand to mouth.
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Don't give us your doubts, gives us your certainties, for we have doubts enough of our own.
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We gladly put antiquity above our age but not posterity. Only a father doesn't begrudge his son's talent.
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Care is taken that trees do not grow into the sky.
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A man sees in the world what he carries in his heart.
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Every great idea exerts, on first appearing, a tyrannical influence: Hence, the advantages it brings are turned all too soon into disadvantages.
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Enjoy what you can, endure what you must.
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Every situation--nay, every moment--is of infinite worth; for it is the representative of a whole eternity.
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Rest not. Life is sweeping by; go and dare before you die. Something mighty and sublime, leave behind to conquer time.
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Wishes are premonitions of abilities.
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He who does not stretch himself according to the coverlet finds his feet uncovered.