Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Quotes
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Men's prejudices rest upon their character for the time being and cannot be overcome, as being part and parcel of themselves. Neither evidence nor common sense nor reason has the slightest influence upon them.
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Thinking is more interesting than knowing, but less interesting than looking.
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Wine rejoices the heart of man and joy is the mother of all virtues.
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At bottom, no real object is unpoetical, if the poet knows how to use it properly.
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I was oppressed with the sensations I then felt; I sunk under the weight of them.
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There are two things parents should give their children roots and wings. Roots to give them bearing and a sense of belonging, but also wings to help free them from constraints and prejudices and give them other ways to travel (or rather, to fly).
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Energy is the basis of everything. Every Jew, no matter how insignificant, is engaged in some decisive and immediate pursuit of a goal... It is the most perpetual people of the earth.
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Tolerance comes of age. I see no fault committed that I myself could not have committed at some time or other.
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True happiness springs from moderation.
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Nature knows no pause in progress and development, and attaches her curse on all inaction.
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Energy will do anything that can be done in the world; and no talents, no circumstances, no opportunities will make a two-legged animal a man without it.
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The really unhappy person is the one who leaves undone what they can do, and starts doing what they don't understand; no wonder they come to grief.
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They should be ashamed of themselves, all these sober people!
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It is in the half fools and the half wise that the greatest danger lies.
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I will say with Lorenzo de Medici that those who do not hope for another life are always dead to this one.
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God made man simple, but how he changed and got complicated is hard to say.
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Most pioneers are at the mercy of doubt at the beginning, whether of their worth, of their theories, or of the whole enigmatic field in which they labour.
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When you take a man as he is, you make him worse. When you take a man as he can be, you make him better.
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Boldness has power, magic and genius in it.
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What is not started today is never finished tomorrow.
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What is the universal? The single case. What is the particular? Millions of cases.
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Nature has neither core nor skin: she’s both at once outside and in.
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My worthy friend, gray are all theories And green alone Life's golden tree.
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The people rate strength before everything.