Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Quotes
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How can we know ourselves? Never by reflection, but only through action. Begin at once to do your duty and immediately you will know what is inside you.
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What is uttered from the heart alone, Will win the hearts of others to your own.
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We eagerly get hold of a law that serves as a weapon to our passions.
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When intelligent and sensible people despise knowledge in their old age, it is only because they have asked too much of it and of themselves.
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Not the maker of plans and promises, but rather the one who offers faithful service in small matters. This is the person who is most likely to achieve what is good and lasting.
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At bottom, no real object is unpoetical, if the poet knows how to use it properly.
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Doubt grows with knowledge.
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Mystery is truth's dancing partner.
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If all these devils really exist it proves there must be angels, too.
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What am I then...? Everything that I have seen, heard, and observed I have collected and exploited. My works have been nourished by countless different individuals, by innocent and wise ones, people of intelligence and dunces. Childhood, maturity and old age all have brought me their thoughts....their perspectives on life. I have often reaped what others have sowed. My work is the work of a collective being that bears the name Goethe.
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The follies of the wise man are known to himself, but hidden from the world.
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When ideas fail, words come in very handy.
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Enjoy when you can, and endure when you must.
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I have come to the frightening conclusion that I am the decisive element. It is my personal approach that creates the climate.
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Every idea appears at first as a strange visitor, and when it begins to be realized, it is hardly distinguishable from fantasy.
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To make converts is the natural ambition of everyone.
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Go to foreign countries and you will get to know the good things one possesses at home.
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Mathematics has the completely false reputation of yielding infallible conclusions. Its infallibility is nothing but identity. Two times two is not four, but it is just two times two, and that is what we call four for short. But four is nothing new at all. And thus it goes on and on in its conclusions, except that in the higher formulas the identity fades out of sight.
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All professional men are handicapped by not being allowed to ignore things which are useless.
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To live within limits. To want one thing. Or a few things very much and love them dearly. Cling to them, survey them from every angle. Become one with them - that is what makes the poet, the artist, the human being.
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What makes people happy is activity; changing evil itself into good by power, working in a God like manner.
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Life is but a preparation for what there is to come.
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You can easily judge the character of a man by how he treats those who can do nothing for him.
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True love is love that stays constant for ever, whatever it's fortune; whether requited or scored, filled or sent empty away.