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Science has been seriously retarded by the study of what is not worth knowing and of what is not knowable.

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
Study
Knowing
Science
Knowable
Retarded
Physics
Seriously
Accounts
Worth

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Be above it! Make the world serve your purpose, but do not serve it.
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A great scholar is seldom a great philosopher.
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What a mighty spirit in a narrow bosom. [Ger., Welch' hoher Geist in einer engen Brust.]
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A reasonable man needs only to practice moderation to find happiness.
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Our virtues and view spring from one root.
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Writing history is a method of getting rid of the past.
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Nature reacts not only to physical disease, but also to moral weakness when the danger increases she gives us greater courage
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Try novelties for salesman's bait, For novelty wins everyone.
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I wait for the morning of my tears
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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.
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The day of fortune is like a harvest day, We must be busy when the corn is ripe. [Ger., Ein tag der Gunst ist wie ein Tag der Ernte, Man muss geschaftig sein sobald sie reift.]
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There is nothing more fearful than imagination without taste. [Ger., Es ist nichts furchterlicher als Einbildungskraft ohne Geschmack.]
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Sceptics are yet the most credulous.
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We must not hope to be mowers, And to gather the ripe gold ears, Unless we have first been sowers And water the furrows with tears. It is not just as we take it, This mystical world of ours, Life's field will yield as we make it A harvest of thorns or of flowers.
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Our modern wars make many unhappy while they last and none happy when they are over.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
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The day is of infinite length for him who knows how to appreciate and use it.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
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What men usually say of misfortunes, that they never come alone, may with equal truth be said of good fortune nay, of other circumstances which gather round us in a harmonious way, whether it arise from a kind of fatality, or that man has the power of attracting to himself things that are mutually related.
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Look at a man the way he is and he only becomes worse, but look at him as if he were what he could be, then he becomes what he should be.
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In all times it is only individuals that have advanced science, not the age.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
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None are so hopelessly enslaved, as those who falsely believe they are free. The truth has been kept from the depth of their minds by masters who rule them with lies. They feed them on falsehoods till wrong looks like right in their eyes.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe