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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
Worth
Study
Knowing
Science
Knowable
Retarded
Physics
Seriously
Accounts

More quotes by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

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One says a lot in vain, refusing The other mainly hears the No.
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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.
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A life without love, without the presence of the beloved, is nothing but a mere magic-lantern show. We draw out slide after slide, swiftly tiring of each, and pushing it back to make haste for the next.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
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Error is to truth as sleep is to waking. I have observed that one turns, as if refreshed, from error back to truth.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
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Behavior is the mirror in which everyone shows their image.
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 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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There is nothing more frightful than ignorance in action.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
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One can stand anything except a succession of ordinary days
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
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How shall we plan, that all be fresh and new-- Important matter yet attractive too? [Ger., Wie machen wir's, dass alles frisch und neu Und mit Bedeutung auch gefallig sei?]
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
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That which thy fathers have bequeathed to thee, earn it anew if thou wouldst possess it.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
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New inventions can and will be made however, nothing new can be thought of that concerns moral man. Everything has already been thought and said which at best we can express in different forms and give new expressions to.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
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The eternal feminine draws us on high.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
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I wish the stage were as narrow as the wire of a tighrope dancer so that no incompetent would dare step upon it.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
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One is never satisfied with the portrait of a person that one knows.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
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While man's desires and aspirations stir he cannot choose but err.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
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One criticizes the English for carrying their teapots wherever they go, even lugging them up Mount Etna. But doesn't every nationhave its teapot, in which, even when traveling, it brews the dried bundles of herbs brought from home?
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
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Beauty and Genius must be kept afar if one would avoid becoming their slave.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
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Writing history is a method of getting rid of the past.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
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The greatest piece of folly is that every man thinks himself compelled to hand down what people think they have known.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe