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Everything that we call Invention or Discovery in the higher sense of the word is the serious exercise and activity of an original feeling for truth, which, after a long course of silent cultivation, suddenly flashes out into fruitful knowledge.

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
Long
Feeling
Discovery
Flashes
Call
Silent
Fruitful
Word
Activity
Cultivation
Knowledge
Exercise
Flash
Sense
Higher
Invention
Feelings
Serious
Originals
Truth
Courses
Original
Everything
Course
Suddenly

More quotes by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

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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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Blood is a juice of rarest quality. [Ger., Blut ist ein ganz beondrer Saft.]
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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.
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Don't say that you want to give, but go ahead and give! You'll never catch up with a mere hope.
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Only law can give us freedom.
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Clever people are always the best conversations lexicon.
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He who does not expect a million readers should not write a line.
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Every step of life shows much caution is required.
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Hypotheses are the scaffolds which are erected in front of a building and removedd when the building is completed. They are indispensable to the worker but the worker must not mistake the scaffolding for the building.
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Self knowledge is best learned not by contemplation, but by action.
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It is in vain that a man of sound mind and cool temper understands the condition of such a wretched being... He can no more communicate his own wisdom to him than a healthy man can instil his strength into the invalid by whose bedside he is seated.
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Certain books seem to be written, not that we might learn from them, but in order that we might see how much the author knows.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
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Our modern wars make many unhappy while they last and none happy when they are over.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
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To live within limits. To want one thing. Or a few things very much and love them dearly. Cling to them, survey them from every angle. Become one with them - that is what makes the poet, the artist, the human being.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
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A wife is a gift bestowed upon a man to reconcile him to the loss of paradise.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
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If we meet someone who owes us a debt of gratitude, we remember the fact at once. How often we can meet someone to whom we owe a debt of gratitude without thinking about it at all!
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
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Light has called forth one organ to become its like, and thus the eye is formed by the light and for the light so that the inner light may emerge to meet the outer light.
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Everyone holds his fortune in his own hands, like a sculptor the raw material he will fashion into a figure. But it's the same with that type of artistic activity as with all others: We are merely born with the capability to do it. The Skill to mold the material into what we want must be learned and attentively cultivated.
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A plant is like a self-willed man, out of whom we can obtain all which we desire, if we will only treat him his own way.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
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The soul-stirring image of death is no bugbear to the sage, and is looked on without despair by the pious. It teaches the former to live, and it strengthens the hopes of the latter in salvation in the midst of distress. Death is new life to both.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe