Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Quotes
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If I say to the moment: 'Stay now! You are so beautiful'!
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Girls we love for what they are; young men for what they promise to be.
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Just as, out of habit, one consults a run-down clock as though it were still going, so too one may look at the face of a beautiful woman as though he still loved her.
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Truth must be repeated again and again, because error is constantly being preached round about.
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Do not give in too much to feelings. A overly sensitive heart is an unhappy possession on this shaky earth.
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A plant is like a self-willed man, out of whom we can obtain all which we desire, if we will only treat him his own way.
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Mankind? That is an abstraction. There have always been and always will be only individuals.
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One should not wish anyone disagreeable conditions of life; but for him who is involved in them by chance, they are touchstones of characters and of the most decisive value to man.
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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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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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Willing is not enough, we must do.
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One is never satisfied with a portrait of persons whom one knows. That is why I have always pitied portraitists. One demands so seldom of others the impossible, but demands just that of the portraitists.
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It is the color closest to light. In its utmost purity it always implies the nature of brightness and has a cheerful, serene, gently stimulating character. Hence, experience teaches us that yellow makes a thoroughly warm and comforting impression.
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Conscience is the virtue of the observers not the agents of action.
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Life is the childhood of our immortality.
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Those that are firm in their will mold the world to themselves.
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That we understand something perfectly, that we accomplish something better than anyone else around us, that is what matters.
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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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Be above it! Make the world serve your purpose, but do not serve it.
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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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Be generous with kindly words, especially about those who are absent.
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Let us live, while we are alive!
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As long as you are not aware of the continual law of Die and Be Again, you are merely a vague guest on a dark Earth.
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All professional men are handicapped by not being allowed to ignore things which are useless.