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While man's desires and aspirations stir he cannot choose but err.

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
Desire
Cannot
Men
Stir
Aspirations
Aspiration
Desires
Choose

More quotes by 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
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Every great idea exerts, on first appearing, a tyrannical influence: Hence, the advantages it brings are turned all too soon into disadvantages.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
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How can we learn self-knowledge? Never by taking thought but rather by action. Try to do your duty and you'll soon discover what you're like.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
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A person hears only what they understand.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
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We are our own devils we drive ourselves out of our Edens.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
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Ambition and love are the wings of great actions.
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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One spares old people just as one spares children.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
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In art it's not the thinking that does the job, but making.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
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Everything factual is, in a sense, theory. The blue of the sky exhibits the basic laws of chromatics. There is no sense in looking for something behind phenomena: they are theory.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
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The one who acts is always without conscience nobody has a conscience but the contemplative person.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
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Ah, how often I've cursed those foolish pages, That showed my youthful sufferings to everyone! If Werther had been my brother, and I'd killed him, His sad ghost could hardly have persecuted me more.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
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True happiness springs from moderation.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
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What is hardest of all? That which seems most simple: to see with your eyes what is before your eyes.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
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Girls we love for what they are young men for what they promise to be.
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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He is happiest, be he king or peasant, who finds peace in his home.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
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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.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
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The iron hand of necessity commands, and her stern decree is supreme law, to which the gods even must submit. In deep silence rules the uncounselled sister of eternal fate. Whatever she lays upon thee, endure perform whatever she commands.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
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To every one [Nature] appears in a form of his own. She hides herself in a thousand names and terms, and is always the same.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe