Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Quotes
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A person is never happy till their vague strivings has itself marked out its proper limitations.
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Prudent and active men, who know their strength and use it with limit and circumspection, alone go far in the affairs of the world.
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The further one advances in experience, the closer one comes to the unfathomable; the more one learns to utilize experience, the more one recognizes that the unfathomable is of no practical value.
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Painting and tattooing the body is a return to animalism.
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Character - in things great and small - is indicated when a man (or person) pursues with sustained follow-through what he feels himself capable of doing.
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Lose the day loitering, 'twill be the same story To-morrow, and the next more dilatory, For indecision brings its own delays, And days are lost lamenting o'er lost days. Are you in earnest? Seize this very minute! What you can do, or think you can, begin it! Only engage, and then the mind grows heated; Begin it, and the work will be completed.
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We are our own aptest deceiver.
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The art of living rightly is like all arts; it must be learned and practiced with incessant care.
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Plunge boldly into the thick of life!
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The Bible grows more beautiful, as we grow in our understanding of it.
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Life belongs to the living, and he who lives must be prepared for changes.
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Misunderstandings and neglect create more confusion in this world than trickery and malice. At any rate, the last two are certainly much less frequent.
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Hypotheses are the scaffolds which are erected in front of a building and removedd when the building is completed. They are indispensable to the worker; but the worker must not mistake the scaffolding for the building.
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Every author in some way portrays himself in his works, even if it be against his will.
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You shall abstain, shall abstain. That is the eternal song.
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No one feels himself easy in a garden which does not look like the open country.
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There is a great difference, whether the poet seeks the particular for the sake of the general or sees the general in the particular. From the former procedure there ensues allegory, in which the particular serves only as illustration, as example of the general. The latter procedure, however, is genuinely the nature of poetry; it expresses something particular, without thinking of the general or pointing to it.
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Any trifle is enough to entertain two lovers.
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A really great talent finds its happiness in execution.
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Writing history is a method of getting rid of the past.
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As great, everlasting, Adamantine laws Dictate, we must all Complete the cycles Of our existence.
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Freedom consists not in refusing to recognize anything above us, but in respecting something which is above us; for by respecting it, we raise ourselves to it, and, by our very acknowledgment, prove that we bear within ourselves what is higher, and are worthy to be on a level with it.
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The soul that sees beauty may sometimes walk alone.
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We love a girl for very different qualities than understanding. We love her for her beauty, her youth, her mirth, her confidingness, her character, with its faults, caprices and God knows what other inexpressible charms; but we do not love her understanding.