Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Quotes
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A distracted existence leads us to no goal.
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True observers of nature, although they may think differently, will still agree that everything that is, everything that is observable as a phenomenon, can only exhibit itself in one of two ways. It is either a primal polarity that is able to unify, or it is a primal unity that is able to divide. The operation of nature consists of splitting the united or uniting the divided; this is the eternal movement of systole and diastole of the heartbeat, the inhalation and exhalation of the world in which we live, act, and exist.
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Science and art belong to the whole world, and before them vanish the barriers of nationality.
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One must be something in order to do something.
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The few of understanding, vision rare, Who veiled not from the herd their hearts, but tried, Poor generous fools, to lay their feelings bare, Them have men always burnt and crucified.
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No man learns to know his inmost nature by introspection, for he rates himself sometimes too low, and often too high, by his own measurement. Man knows himself only by comparing himself with other men; it is life that touches his genuine worth.
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The world is so empty if one thinks only of mountains, rivers and cities; but to know someone who thinks and feels with us, and who, though distant, is close to us in spirit, this makes the earth for us an inhabited garden.
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The Christian religion, though scattered and abroad will in the end gather itself together at the foot of the cross.
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The sum which two married people owe to one another defies calculation. It is an infinite debt, which can only be discharged through all eternity.
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A man does not mind being blamed for his faults, and being punished for them, and he patiently suffers much for them; but he becomes impatient if he is required to give them up.
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Microscopes and telescopes really confuse our minds.
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Every spoken word arouses our self-will.
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I have learned much from disease which life could have never taught me anywhere else.
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The fate of the architect is the strangest of all. How often he expends his whole soul, his whole heart and passion, to produce buildings into which he himself may never enter.
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Do not, I beg you, look for anything behind phenomena. They are themselves their own lesson.
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Nothing is more damaging to a new truth than an old error.
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He is a prophet and not a poet and therefore his Koran is to be seen as Divine Law, and not as a book of a human being made for education or entertainment.
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The highest cannot be spoken; it can only be acted.
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Wo viel Licht ist, ist starker Schatten.
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So gewiß ist der allein glücklich und groß, der weder zu herrschen noch zu gehorchen braucht, um etwas zu sein!
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The man who masters himself is delivered from the force that binds all creatures.
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Belief is not the beginning of knowledge - it is the end.
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Instruction does much, but encouragement everything.
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We who didn't inherit political power nor are made to acquire riches like nothing better than that which expands and solidifies the power of the spirit.