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The decline in literature indicates a decline in the nation. The two keep pace in their downward tendency.

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
Two
Decline
Pace
Tendencies
Creativity
Nation
Literature
Downward
Nations
Indicates
Keep
Tendency

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The artist who is not also a craftsman is no good but, alas, most of our artists are nothing else.
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It is in vain that a man of sound mind and cool temper understands the condition of such a wretched being... He can no more communicate his own wisdom to him than a healthy man can instil his strength into the invalid by whose bedside he is seated.
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Mere curiosity adds wings to every step.
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Superstition is rooted in a much deeper and more sensitive layer of the psyche than skepticism.
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To appear at church every Sunday to look down upon, and let himself be looked at for an hour by the congregation, is the best means of becoming popular which can be recommended to a young sovereign.
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All theory, my friend, is grey, But green is life's glad golden tree.
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What is part of you, you cannot get rid of, even if you were to throw it away.
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To me the external existence of my soul is proved from my idea of activity. If I work incessantly until my death, nature will give me another form of existence when the present can no longer sustain my spirit.
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My counsel is, to force nothing, and rather to trifle and sleep away all unproductive days and hours, than on such days to compose something that will afterwards give no pleasure.
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They should be ashamed of themselves, all these sober people!
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Fret not over the irretrievable, but ever act as if thy life were just begun.
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Every man must form himself as a particular being, seeking, however, to attain that general idea of which all mankind are constituents.
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For I have been a man, and that means to have been a fighter.
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What is my life if I am no longer useful to others.
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Thinking is easy, acting is difficult, and to put one's thoughts into action is the most difficult thing in the world.
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Let us live in as small a circle as we will, we are either debtors or creditors before we have had time to look around.
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There is nothing in life so irrational, that good sense and chance may not set it to rights nothing so rational, that folly and chance may not utterly confound it.
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Certain books seem to be written, not that we might learn from them, but in order that we might see how much the author knows.
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Thou tremblest before anticipated ills, and still bemoanest what thou never losest.
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So much has already been said about Shakespeare that there doesn't seem to be anything more to say yet it is the quality of the spirit that it forever stimulates the spirit.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe