Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Quotes
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When Nature begins to reveal her open secret to a man, he feels an irresistible longing for her worthiest interpreter, Art.
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Judge a man's character by what he finds ridiculous.
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To create something you must be something.
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Not art and science only, but patience will be required for the work.
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When two people are really happy about one another one can generally assume they are mistaken.
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Children, like dogs, have so sharp and fine a scent that they detect and hunt out everything--the bad before all the rest. They also know well enough how this or that friend stands with their parents; and as they practice no dissimulation whatever, they serve as excellent barometers by which to observe the degree of favor or disfavor at which we stand with their parents.
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Whenever I hear people talking about liberal ideas, I am always astounded that men should love to fool themselves with empty sounds. An idea should never be liberal; it must be vigorous, positive, and without loose ends so that it may fulfill its divine mission and be productive.
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The destiny of any nation at any given time depends on the opinion of its young people, those under twenty-five.
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A person places themselves on a level with the ones they praise.
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If it is the greatest truth that you seek, the plants can direct you.
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The greatest evil that can befall man is that he should come to think ill of himself.
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We know accurately only when we know little, with knowledge doubt increases.
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Words express neither objects nor ourselves.
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Go to the place where the thing you wish to know is native; your best teacher is there. Where the thing you wish to know is so dominant that you must breathe its very atmosphere, there teaching is moat thorough, and learning is most easy. You acquire a language most readily in the country where it is spoken; you study mineralogy boat among miners; and so with everything else.
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Normally, the sciences distance themselves from life and the return to it via a detour.
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Whoso is content with pure experience and acts upon it has enough of truth.
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Thank God when he oppresses you, and again when he releases you.
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Those who hope for no other life are dead even for this.
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The Primal Plant is going be the strangest creature in the world, which Nature herself must envy me. With this model and the key to it, it will be possible to go on for ever inventing plants and know that their existence is logical; that is to say, if they do not actually exist, they could, for they are not the shadowy phantoms of a vain imagination, but possess an inner necessity and truth. The same law will be applicable to all other living organisms.
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Each traveler should know what he has to see, and what properly belongs to him, on a journey.
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What is the freedom of the most free? To do what is right!
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Since you know me and my destiny only too well, you probably also know what attracts me to all unfortunate people.
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Giving is the business of the rich.
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Beautiful is greater than Good, for it includes the Good.