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Profoundness, genius, spontaneity, merit, nobility, ingenuity, voice propriety, feeling, discernment, sensibility, good taste, great tone, rightness, courtliness, vivacity, boldness, style, freshness, harmony, perfection, imagination, purity, correctness. The greatest writer of all times. God's most astonishing creation.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe -
Treat a person as they are, they will remain so. Treat a person the way that person can be and is capable of being and that person will become as he or she can be and should be.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
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In politics as on a sickbed men toss from side to side in hope of lying more comfortably.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe -
People should talk less and draw more. Personally, I would like to renounce speech altogether and, like organic nature, communicate everything I have to say visually.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe -
Each traveler should know what he has to see, and what properly belongs to him, on a journey.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe -
All the knowledge I possess everyone else can acquire, but my heart is all my own.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe -
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.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe -
Continue to make the demands of the day your immediate concern, and take occasion to test the purity of your hearts and the steadfastness of your spirits. When you then take a deep breath and rise above the cares of this world and in an hour of leisure, you will surely win the proper frame of mind to face devoutly what is above us, with reverence, seeing in all events the manifestation of a higher guidance.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
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We are surrounded by abysses, but the greatest of all depths is in our own heart, and an irresistible leaning leads us there. Draw thyself from thyself!
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe -
Those who hope for no other life are dead even for this.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe -
A person places themselves on a level with the ones they praise.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe -
When two people are really happy about one another one can generally assume they are mistaken.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe -
When Nature begins to reveal her open secret to a man, he feels an irresistible longing for her worthiest interpreter, Art.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe -
In art it's not the thinking that does the job, but making.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
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When the healthy nature of man acts as a whole, when he feels himself to be in the world as in a great, beautiful, noble, and valued whole, when harmonious ease affords him a pure and free delight, then the universe, if it could experience itself, would exult, as having attained its goal, and admire the climax of its own becoming and essence.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe -
Most men, even the most accomplished, are of limited faculties; every one sets a value on certain qualities in himself and others: these alone he is willing to favour, these alone will he have cultivated.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe -
Nature is beneficent. I praise her and all her works. She is silent and wise. She is cunning, but for good ends. She has brought me here and will also lead me away. She may scold me, but she will not hate her work. I trust her.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe -
One doesn't always lose when one has to do without.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe -
We know accurately only when we know little, with knowledge doubt increases.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe -
He who serves the public is a poor animal; he worries himself to death and no one thanks him for it.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
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Thou tremblest before anticipated ills, and still bemoanest what thou never losest.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe -
It is the great triumph of genius to make the common appear novel.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe -
All men would be masters of others, and no man is lord of himself.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe -
Artists have a double relationship towards nature: they are her master and her slave at the same time. They are her slave in so far as they must work with means of this world so as to be understood; her master in so far as they subject these means to their higher goals and make them subservient to them.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe