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Some books seem to have been written, not to teach us anything, but to let us know that the author has known something.

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
Seems
Anything
Author
Book
Artistic
Something
Seem
Teach
Books
Written
Known

More quotes by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

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Who strives always to the utmost, him can we save.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
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The ideal of beauty is simplicity and tranquility.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
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I respect the man who knows distinctly what he wants.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
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A great deal may be done by severity, more by love, but most by clear discernment and impartial justice.
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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There are but few who have ideas and are, at the same time, capable of action. Ideas enlarge but stymie, action enlivens but confines.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
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No prudent antagonist thinks light of his adversaries.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
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We lay aside letters never to read them again, and at last we destroy them out discretion, and so disappears the most immediate breath of life, irrecoverably for ourselves and for others.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
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Why go further and further, Look, happiness is right here. Learn how to grab hold of luck, For luck is always there.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
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There is nothing in life so irrational, that good sense and chance may not set it to rights nothing so rational, that folly and chance may not utterly confound it.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
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As soon as you trust yourself, you will know how to live.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
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Experience is only half of experience.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
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If you want to understand poetry, You have to go to its origin, If you want to understand the poet, You have to go to the Poet's home.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
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Man errs, till he has ceased to strive.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
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A mind, once formed, is never suited after, One yet in growth will ever grateful be. [Ger., Wer fertig ist, dem ist nichts recht zu machen, Ein Werdender wird immer dankbar sein.]
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
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Every idea appears at first as a strange visitor, and when it begins to be realized, it is hardly distinguishable from fantasy.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
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Be always resolute with the present hour. Every moment is of infinite value.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
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Everything perfect in its kind has to transcend its own kind, it must become something different and incomparable. In some notes the nightingale is still a bird then it rises above its class and seems to suggest to every winged creature what singing is truly like.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
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Without haste! without rest! Bind the motto to thy breast! Bear it with thee as a spell Storm or sunshine , guard it well.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
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This is the true measure of love, When we believe that we alone can love, That no one could ever have loved so before us, And that no one will ever love in the same way after us.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe