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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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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
Become
Truth
Hard
Must
Advance
Years
Fancy
Always
Wise
People
Age
Keep

More quotes by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

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The miller imagines that the corn grows only to make his mill turn.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
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There is nothing more frightful than an active ignorance. [Ger., Es ist nichts schrecklicher als eine thatige Unwissenheit.]
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
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The modern age has a false sense of superiority, because of the great mass of data at its disposal. But the valid criterion of distinction is rather the extent to which man knows how to form and master the material at his command.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
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What is the universal? The single case. What is the particular? Millions of cases.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
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Alas! how much there is in education, and in our social institutions, to prepare us and our children for insanity.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
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When you are in conflict with someone, there is one factor that can make the difference between damaging your relationship and deepening it. That factor is attitude. We don't get to know people when they come to us we must go to them to find out what they are like.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
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If you call a thing bad you do little, if you call a thing good you do much
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
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Let there be truth between us.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
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Life seems so vulgar, so easily content with the commonplace things of every day, and yet it always nurses and cherishes certain higher claims in secret, and looks about for the means of satisfying them.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
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So long as you live and work, you will be misunderstood to that you must resign yourself once and for all. Be silent!
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
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For I have been a man, and that means to have been a fighter.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
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One cannot always be a hero, but one can always be a man.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
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I examine my own being, and find there a world, but a world rather of imagination and dim desires, than of distinctness and living power. Then everything swims before my senses, and I smile and dream while pursuing my way through the world.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
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Whoever gives himself up to solitude, Ah! he is soon alone.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
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In happy ignorance, I sighed for a world I did not know, where I hoped to find every pleasure and enjoyment which my heart could desire and now, on my return from that wide world... how many disappointed hopes and unsuccessful plans have I brought back!
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
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Piety is not an end, but a means: a means of attaining the highest culture by the purest tranquility of soul. Hence it may be observed that those who set up piety as an end and object are mostly hypocrites.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
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Unlimited activity, of whatever kind, must end in bankruptcy.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
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Tis Lilith. Who? Adam's first wife is she. Beware the lure within her lovely tresses, The splendid sole adornment of her hair When she succeeds therewith a youth to snare, Not soon again she frees him from her jesses.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
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Noble be man, Helpful and good! For that alone Sets him apart From every other creature On earth.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
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Great passions are incurable diseases.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe