Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Quotes
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I could never have known so well how paltry men are, and how little they care for really high aims, if I had not tested them by my scientific researches. Thus I saw that most men only care for science so far as they get a living by it, and that they worship even error when it affords them a subsistence.
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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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It is a great pleasure to transport one's-self into the spirit of the times; to see how a wise man has thought before us, and to what a glorious height we have at last carried it.
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Amerika, du hast es besser-als unser Kontinent, der alte.
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On the pinnacle of success man does not stand firm long.
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What one has wished for in youth, in old age one has in abundance.
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Good children's literature appeals not only to the child in the adult, but to the adult in the child.
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Ich bin der Geist der stets verneint.
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Water its living strength first shows, When obstacles its course oppose.
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One is led astray alike by sympathy and coldness, by praise and by blame.
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Ignorant men raise questions that wise men answered a thousand years ago.
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Against great advantages in another, there are no means of defending ourselves except love.
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New inventions can and will be made; however, nothing new can be thought of that concerns moral man. Everything has already been thought and said which at best we can express in different forms and give new expressions to.
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Traveling is like gambling: it is always connected with winning and losing and generally where it is least expected we receive, more or less than what we hoped for.
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A man who is ignorant of foreign languages is also ignorant of his own language.
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Investigate what is, and not what pleases.
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Here too it’s masquerade, I find: As everywhere, the dance of mind. I grasped a lovely masked procession, And caught things from a horror show… I’d gladly settle for a false impression, If it would last a little longer, though.
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Whoever, in middle age, attempts to realize the wishes and hopes of his early youth, invariably deceives himself. Each ten years of a man's life has its own fortunes, its own hopes, its own desires.
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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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True art can only spring from the intimate linking of the serious and the playful.
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Each indecision brings its own delays and days are lost lamenting over lost days... What you can do or think you can do, begin it. For boldness has magic, power, and genius in it.
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A leaf that is destined to grow large is full of grooves and wrinkles at the start. Now if one has no patience and wants it smooth offhand like a willow leaf, there is trouble ahead.
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Faith is like private capital, stored in one's own house. It is like a public savings bank or loan office, from which individuals receive assistance in their days of need; but here the creditor quietly takes his interest for himself.
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The decline in literature indicates a decline in the nation. The two keep pace in their downward tendency.