Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Quotes
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There is no surer method of evading the world than by following Art, and no surer method of linking oneself to it than by Art.
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The intelligent man finds almost everything ridiculous, the sensible man hardly anything.
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Mannerism always wants to be finished and doesn't enjoy the process. Genuine, truly great talent, however, finds its greatest satisfaction in the production.
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Rejoice that you have still have a long time to live, before the thought comes to you that there is nothing more in the world to see.
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I hate everything that merely instructs me without augmenting or directly invigorating my activity.
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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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There is nothing in life so irrational, that good sense and chance may not set it to rights; nothing so rational, that folly and chance may not utterly confound it.
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Wer fremde Sprachen nicht kennt, weiss nichts von seiner eigenen.He who is ignorant of foreign languages, knows not his own.
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When translating one must proceed up to the intranslatable; only then one becomes aware of the foreign nation and the foreign tongue.
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I never knew how to worship until I knew how to love.
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Hatred is active displeasure, envy passive. We need not wonder that envy turns to soon to hatred.
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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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Distrust those in whom the desire to punish is strong.
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Fret not over the irretrievable, but ever act as if thy life were just begun.
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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 right man is the one who seizes the moment.
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Truth is a torch, but a terrific one; therefore we all try to reach it with closed eyes, lest we should be scorched.
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He is happy as well as great who needs neither to obey nor to command in order to be something.
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If a man writes a book, let him set down only what he knows. I have guesses enough of my own.
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Without haste! without rest! Bind the motto to thy breast! Bear it with thee as a spell; Storm or sunshine, guard it well.
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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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Art rests on a kind of religious sense, on a deep, steadfast earnestness; and on this account it unites so readily with religion.
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I let everyone follow his own bent, that I may be free to follow mine.
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As long as you don't practice it, this dying and becoming, You are only a dreary guest on this dark earth.