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Everything that frees our spirit without giving us control of ourselves is ruinous.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

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Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Age: 82 †
Born: 1749
Born: August 22
Died: 1832
Died: March 22
Aphorist
Art Critic
Art Theorist
Autobiographer
Botanist
Composer
Diarist
Diplomat
Jurist
Lawyer
Librarian
Librettist
Literary
Frankfurt/Main
Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
Goethe
goethe
johann wolfgang von goethe
joh. wolfg. von goethe
j. w. von goethe
Everything
Without
Giving
Ruinous
Frees
Control
Happiness
Spirit

More quotes by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

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I reverence the individual who understands distinctly what he wishes who unweariedly advances, who knows the means conducive to his object, and can seize and use them.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
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We are our own aptest deceiver.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
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Words are good, but there is something better. The best cannot be explained by words. The spirit in which we act is the chief matter. Action can only be only understood and represented by the spirit.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
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For just when ideas fail, a word comes in to save the situation.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
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In happy ignorance, I sighed for a world I did not know, where I hoped to find every pleasure and enjoyment which my heart could desire and now, on my return from that wide world... how many disappointed hopes and unsuccessful plans have I brought back!
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
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And those whom once my song had cheered and gladdened, If still they live, rove through the world now saddened.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
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There are but few who have ideas and are, at the same time, capable of action. Ideas enlarge but stymie, action enlivens but confines.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
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The mind is found most acute and most uneasy in the morning. Uneasiness is, indeed, a species of sagacity - a passive sagacity. Fools are never uneasy.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
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Superstition is part of the poetry of life.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
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The passions are like those demons with which Afrasahiab sailed down the Orus. Our only safety consists in keeping them asleep. If they we are lost.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
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Action has magic, grace and power in it.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
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I hold to faith in the divine love - which, so many years ago for a brief moment in a little corner of the earth, walked about as a man bearing the name of Jesus Christ - as the foundation on which alone my happiness rests.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
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To like things like, whatever one may ail There is certain help.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
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There is nothing so terrible as activity without insight.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
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It used to happen, and still happens, to me to take no pleasure in a work of art at the first sight of it, because it is too much for me but if I suspect any merit in it, I try to get at it and then I never fail to make the most gratifying discoveries--to find new qualities in the work itself and new faculties in myself.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
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Man's highest merit always is, as much as possible, to rule external circumstances and as little as possible to let himself be ruled by them.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
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Thou art in the end what thou art. Put on wigs with millions of curls, set thy foot upon ell-high rocks. Thou abidest ever--what thou art.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
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One of the most striking signs of the decay of art is the intermixing of different genres.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
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We can stand only a certain amount of unhappiness anything beyond that annihilates us or passes us by, leaving us apathethetic.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
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I have possessed that heart, that noble soul, in whose presence I seemed to be more than I really was, because I was all that I could be.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe