Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Quotes
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Everything which is properly business we must keep carefully separate from life. Business requires earnestness and method; life must have a freed handling.
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Magic is believing in yourself, if you can do that, you can make anything happen.
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The world is so full of simpletons and madmen, that one need not seek them in a madhouse.
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I have never looked at foreign countries or gone there but with the purpose of getting to know the general human qualities that are spread all over the earth in very different forms, and then to find these qualities again in my own country and to recognize and to further them.
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No wise combatant underestimates their antagonist.
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We often feel that we lack something, and seem to see that very quality in someone else, promptly attributing all our own qualities to him too, and a kind of ideal contentment as well. And so the happy mortal is a model of complete perfection--which we have ourselves created.
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Translators are like busy match-makers: they sing the praises of some half-veiled beauty, and extol her charms, and arouse an irresistible longing for the original.
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All one needs to do is declare oneself free and one will immediately feel dependent. If you dare to declare yourself dependent, you feel independent.
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Each one of us must carry within the proof of immortality, it cannot be given from outside of us. To be sure, everything in natureis change but behind the change there is something eternal.
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The man with insight enough to admit his limitations comes nearest to perfection.
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The thinking person has the strange characteristic to like to create a fantasy in the place of the unsolved problem, a fantasy that stays with the person even when the problem has been solved and truth made its appearance.
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He who wishes to exert a useful influence must be careful to insult nothing. Let him not be troubled by what seems absurd, but concentrate his energies to the creation of what is good. He must not demolish, but build. He must raise temples where mankind may come and partake of the purest pleasure.
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The new vulcanism is really a daring attempt to connect the present, incomprehensible world to a past, unknown one.
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There is no greater consolation for mediocrity than that the genius is not immortal.
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Perseverance is a silent power that grows irresistibly greater with time.
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Analysis and synthesis are both as necessary to the thinking spirit as inspiration and expiration to the organism.
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A person is never happy till their vague strivings has itself marked out its proper limitations.
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If a man sets out to study all the laws, he will have no time left to transgress them.
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Fortunately, we can take in only so much misfortune; what exceeds that limit either destroys us or leaves us indifferent.
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If you live criticizing people, you won't have time to love them.
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Any trifle is enough to entertain two lovers.
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The modern age has a false sense of superiority, because of the great mass of data at its disposal. But the valid criterion of distinction is rather the extent to which man knows how to form and master the material at his command.
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The philosophers must station themselves in the middle.
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I am certain that I have been here as I am now a thousand times before, and I hope to return a thousand times... Man is a dialogue between nature and God. On other planets this dialogue will doubtless be of a higher and profounder character. What is lacking is Self-Knowledge. After that the rest will follow.