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

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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.
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Originality provokes originality.
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If the world does improve on the whole, yet youth must always begin anew, and go through the stages of culture from the beginning.
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What you have inherited from your forefathers, it takes work to make it your own.
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The style of an author is a faithful copy of his mind.
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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.
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Our senses don't deceive us: our judgment does
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Men show their character in nothing more clearly than what they think laughable.
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Colors are the deeds/ and sufferings of light.
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Analysis and synthesis are both as necessary to the thinking spirit as inspiration and expiration to the organism.
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How can we learn self-knowledge? Never by taking thought but rather by action. Try to do your duty and you'll soon discover what you're like.
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I am amazed to see how deliberately I have entangled myself step by step. To have seen my position so clearly, and yet to have acted so like a child!
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To create something you must be something.
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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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He who wishes to exert a useful influence must be careful to insult nothing. Let him not be troubled by what seems absurd, but concentrate his energies to the creation of what is good. He must not demolish, but build. He must raise temples where mankind may come and partake of the purest pleasure.
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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.
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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.
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I've often heard it said a preacher might learn with a comedian for a teacher.
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I do not now begin, - I still adore Her whom I early cherish'd in my breast Then once again with prudence dispossess'd, And to whose heart I'm driven back once more. The love of Petrarch, that all-glorious love, Was unrequited, and, alas, full sad.
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The most difficult thing is what is thought to be the simplest to really see the things which are before your eyes.
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