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People are always talking about originality, but what do they mean? As soon as we are born, the world begins to work upon us, and this goes on to the end.

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
People
Talking
Upon
Born
Ends
Originality
Mean
Conformity
Work
Begins
Always
Soon
World
Goes

More quotes by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

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What a day it is when we must envy the men in their graves.
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To know someone here or there with whom you can feel there is understanding in spite of distances or thoughts expressed That can make life a garden.
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He who has a task to perform must know how to take sides, or he is quite unworthy of it.
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Poor fool! in whose petty estimation all things are little.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
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[Nature's] crown is Love. Only through Love can we come near her. She puts gulfs between all things, and all things strive to be interfused. She isolates everything, that she may draw everything together. With a few draughts from the cup of Love she repays for a life full of trouble.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
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Nothing is more damaging to the truth than an old error.
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Every man must form himself as a particular being, seeking, however, to attain that general idea of which all mankind are constituents.
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The fine emotions whence our lives we mold Lie in the earthly tumult dumb and cold.
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Once you have missed the first buttonhole, you'll never manage to button up.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
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The finished man, you know, is difficult to please a growing mind will ever show you gratitude. --Faust 1, lines 182-3
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
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People always fancy that we must become old to become wise but, in truth, as years advance, it is hard to keep ourselves as wise as we were.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
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Thou must (in commanding and winning, or serving and losing, suffering or triumphing) be either anvil or hammer.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
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I am part of the part that once was everything, Part of the darkness which gave birth to light… Mephistopheles, from Faust.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
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Method will teach you to win time.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
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Since Time is not a person we can overtake when he is gone, let us honor him with mirth and cheerfulness of heart while he is passing.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
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As our inclinations, so our opinions.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
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If a poet would work politically, he must give himself up to a party and so soon as he does that, he is lost as a poet.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
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The first and last thing required of genius is the love of truth. [Ger., Das erste und letzte, was vom Genie gefordert wird, ist Wahreits-Liebe.]
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
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Before you can do something, you must first be something.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
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My days are as happy as those reserved by God for his elect and whatever be my fate hereafter, I can never say that I have not tasted joy— the purest joy of life.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe