Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Quotes
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Is it life, I ask, is it even prudence, To bore thyself and bore the students?
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After all, poets shouldn't be their own interpreters and shouldn't carefully dissect their poems into everyday prose; that would mean the end of being poets. Poets send their creations into the world, it is up to the reader, the aesthetician, and the critic to determine what they wanted to say with their creations.
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The rose is wont with pride to swell, and ever seeks to rise.
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War is in truth a disease in which the juices that serve health and maintenance are used for the sole purpose of nourishing something foreign, something at odds with nature.
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The way you see people is the way you treat them, and the way you treat them is what they become.
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Men are so inclined to content themselves with what is commonest; the spirit and the senses so easily grow dead to the impressions of the beautiful and perfect, that every one should study, by all methods, to nourish in his mind the faculty of feeling these things. ...For this reason, one ought every day at least, to hear a little song, read a good poem, see a fine picture, and, if it were possible, to speak a few reasonable words.
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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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If only these treasures were not so fragile as they are precious and beautiful.
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If you are convinced of a matter, you must take sides or you don't deserve to succeed.
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Age merely shows what children we remain.
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All the knowledge I possess everyone else can acquire, but my heart is all my own.
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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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Names are but noise and smoke, Obscuring heavenly light.
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I am proud of my heart alone, it is the sole source of everything, all our strenght, happiness & misery. All the knowledge I possess everyone else can acquire, but my heart is all my own.
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People who think honestly and deeply have a hostile attitude towards the public.
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Nothing tells more about the character of a man than the things he makes fun of.
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Children can scarcely be fashioned to meet with our likes and our purpose. Just as God did us give them, so must we hold them and love them, nurture and teach them to fullness and leave them to be what they are.
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We are not all equal, nor can we be so.
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I hate every violent overthrow, because as much is destroyed as is gained by it.
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Whoever makes it a rule to test action by thought, thought by action, cannot falter, and if he does, will soon find his way back to the right road.
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Don't dissipate your powers; strive to concentrate them. Genius thinks it can do whatever it sees others doing, but it will surely repent of every ill-judged outlay.
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Where I cannot be moral, my power is gone.
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Things which matter most must never be at the mercy of things which matter least.
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What is now the foliage moving? Air is still, and hush'd the breeze, Sultriness, this fullness loving, Through the thicket, from the trees. Now the eye at once gleams brightly, See! the infant band with mirth Moves and dances nimbly, lightly, As the morning gave it birth, Flutt'ring two and two o'er earth.