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Let us live in as small a circle as we will, we are either debtors or creditors before we have had time to look around.

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
Live
Look
Debtors
Looks
Creditors
Time
Circle
Circles
Either
Small
Around

More quotes by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

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The whole history of the Christian Church is a mixture of errors and violence.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
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Truth is a torch, but a huge one, and so it is only with blinking eyes what we all of us try to get past it, in actual terror of being burnt.
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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The bad thing is that thinking about thought doesn't help at all one has to have it from nature so that the good ideas appear before us like free children of God calling to us: Here we are.
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
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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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Happy the man who early learns the wide chasm that lies between his wishes and his powers.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
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True works of art are a manifestation of the higher laws of nature.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
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Hell begins the day that God grants you the vision to see all that you could have done, should have done, and would have done, but did not do.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
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We must not take the faults of our youth with us into old age, for age brings along its own defects.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
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What is fruitful alone is true.
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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It is commonly the personal character of a writer which gives him his public significance. It is not imparted by his genius. Napoleon said of Corneille, Were he living I would make him a king but he did not read him. He read Racine, yet he said nothing of the kind of Racine.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
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You are certainly wrong to compare suicide ... with great accomplishments, since it cannot be considered as anything but a weakness. After all, it is easier to die than to endure a harrowing life with fortitude.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
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What is not started today is never finished tomorrow.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
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The trouble is small, the fun is great. [Ger., Die Muh'ist klein, der Spass ist gross.]
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
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Normally, the sciences distance themselves from life and the return to it via a detour.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
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When toward the Devil's Hose we tread, Woman's a thousand steps behind. [Ger., Denn geht es zu des Bosen Haus Das Weib hat tausend Schritt voraus.]
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
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Daring ideas are like chessmen moved forward they may be beaten, but they may start a winning game.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
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Beauty is everywhere a welcome guest.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe