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Progress has not followed a straight ascending line, but a spiral with rhythms of progress and retrogression, of evolution and dissolution.

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
Progress
Rhythms
Lines
Dissolution
Followed
Rhythm
Straight
Evolution
Ascending
Line
Spiral
Growth
Spirals

More quotes by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

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Great necessity elevates man, petty necessity casts him down
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Then to the depths! - I could as well say height: It's all the same.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
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You will find the most pronounced hatred of other nations on the lowest cultural levels. There is, though, a level where the hatred disappears completely and where one so to speak stands above the nations and where one experiences fortune or misfortune of a neighboring country as if they had happened to one's own.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
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Behavior is a mirror in which every one shows his image. [Ger., Das Betragen ist ein Spiegel in welchem jeder sein Bild zeigt.]
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
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Self knowledge is best learned not by contemplation, but by action.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
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I've often heard it said a preacher might learn with a comedian for a teacher.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
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If God had wanted me otherwise, He would have created me otherwise.
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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Tolerance should really be only a temporary attitude it must lead to recognition. To tolerate means to offend.
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
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Time is a strange thing. It is a whimsical tyrant, which in every century has a different face for all that one says and does.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
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Fret not over the irretrievable, but ever act as if thy life were just begun.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
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Who never ate his bread in sorrow, Who never spent the darksome hours Weeping, and watching for the morrow,- He knows you not, ye heavenly Powers.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
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One would give generous alms if one had the eyes to see the beauty of a cupped receiving hand.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
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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.]
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
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Men are so constituted that every one undertakes what he sees another successful in, whether he has aptitude for it or not.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
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In society every man is taken for what he gives himself out to be but he must give himself out to be something. Better to be slightly disagreeable than altogether insignificant.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
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Mysteries are not necessarily miracles.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
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All perishable is but an allegory.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
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How happy he who can still hope to lift himself from this sea of error! What we know not, that we are anxious to possess, and cannot use what we know.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe