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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
Seriously
Accounts
Worth
Study
Knowing
Science
Knowable
Retarded
Physics

More quotes by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

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It is only necessary to grow old to become more charitable and even indulgent. I see no fault committed by others that I have not committed myself.
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When translating one must proceed up to the intranslatable only then one becomes aware of the foreign nation and the foreign tongue.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
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The history of knowledge is a great fugue in which the voices of the nations one after the other emerge.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
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I am amazed to see how deliberately I have entangled myself step by step. To have seen my position so clearly, and yet to have acted so like a child!
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
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Talent is nurtured in solitude character is formed in the stormy billows of the world. [Ger., Es bildet ein talent sich in der Stille, Sich ein Charakter in dem Strom der Welt.]
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
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Dispel not, the happy delusions of children.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
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The march of intellect, which licks all the world into shape, has even reached the devil.
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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We must always change, renew, rejuvenate ourselves otherwise, we harden.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
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Where a man has a passion for meditating without the capacity of thinking, a particular idea fixes itself fast, and soon creates a mental disease.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
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What a mighty spirit in a narrow bosom. [Ger., Welch' hoher Geist in einer engen Brust.]
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
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It is not always needful for truth to take a definite shape it is enough if it hovers about us like a spirit and produces harmony if it is wafted through the air like the sound of a bell, grave and kindly.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
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The person of analytic or critical intellect finds something ridiculous in everything. The person of synthetic or constructive intellect, in almost nothing.
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.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
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Ohne Hast, aber ohne Rast. - Without haste, but without rest.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
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Humor is one of the elements of genius--admirable as an adjunct but as soon as it becomes dominant, only a surrogate for genius.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
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Sceptics are yet the most credulous.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
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To venture an opinion is like moving a piece at chess: it may be taken, but it forms the beginning of a game that is won.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
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The heights charm us, but the steps do not with the mountain in our view we love to walk the plains.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
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Passions are defects or virtues in the highest power.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe