Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Quotes
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Some people spend the day in complaining of a headache, and the night in drinking the wine that gives it.
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The dear good people don't know how long it takes to learn to read. I've been at it eighty years, and can't say yet that I've reached the goal.
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Thou tremblest before anticipated ills, and still bemoanest what thou never losest.
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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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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.
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Words express neither objects nor ourselves.
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It is so hard that one cannot really have confidence in doctors and yet cannot do without them.
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Whoso is content with pure experience and acts upon it has enough of truth.
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A person places themselves on a level with the ones they praise.
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There is no way to face the great advantages of another person than through love.
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The human race is a monotonous affair. Most people spend the greatest part of their time working in order to live, and what little freedom remains so fills them with fear that they seek out any and every means to be rid of it.
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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 animal is an end in itself.
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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.
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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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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.
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What is the freedom of the most free? To do what is right!
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I will be lord over myself.
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All intelligent thoughts have already been thought; what is necessary is only to try to think them again.
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A man who cannot command himself will always be a slave.