Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Quotes
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A man's foibles are what makes him lovable.
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Several classical sayings that one likes to repeat had quite a different meaning from the ones later times attributed to them.
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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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Legislators and revolutionaries who promise both equality and liberty are visionaries and charlatans.
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The intelligent man finds almost everything ridiculous, the sensible man hardly anything.
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Happy contractedness of youth, nay, of mankind in general, that they think neither of the high nor the deep, of the true nor the false, but only of what is suited to their own conceptions.
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Everyone holds his fortune in his own hands, like a sculptor the raw material he will fashion into a figure. But it's the same with that type of artistic activity as with all others: We are merely born with the capability to do it. The Skill to mold the material into what we want must be learned and attentively cultivated.
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The field of experience is the whole universe in all directions. Theory remains shut up within the limits of human faculties.
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To make a young couple love each other, it is only necessary to oppose and separate them.
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True observers of nature, although they may think differently, will still agree that everything that is, everything that is observable as a phenomenon, can only exhibit itself in one of two ways. It is either a primal polarity that is able to unify, or it is a primal unity that is able to divide. The operation of nature consists of splitting the united or uniting the divided; this is the eternal movement of systole and diastole of the heartbeat, the inhalation and exhalation of the world in which we live, act, and exist.
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As our inclinations, so our opinions.
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A great deal may be done by severity, more by love, but most by clear discernment and impartial justice.
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Who is the wisest man? He who neither knows or wishes for anything else than what happens.
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The happy do not believe in miracles.
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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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Toleration ought in reality to be merely a transitory mood. It must lead to recognition. To tolerate is to affront.
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Let him who believes in immortality enjoy his happiness in silence; he has no reason to give himself airs about it.
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On the pinnacle of success man does not stand firm long.
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Well-mannered children could be conceived if the parents were well-mannered.
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The best way to understand a painting is by drawing it.
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Ich singe, wie der Vogel singtDer in den Zweigen wohnet.
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Whoso shrinks from ideas ends by having nothing but sensations.
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Clever people are always the best conversations lexicon.
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Whatever necessity lays upon thee, endure; whatever she commands, do.