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It is not always needful for truth to take a definite shape it is enough if it hovers about us like a spirit and produces harmony if it is wafted through the air like the sound of a bell, grave and kindly.

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
Always
Shapes
Bell
Like
Air
Bells
Produce
Produces
Sound
Definite
Spirit
Grave
Wafted
Truth
Graves
Hovers
Take
Shape
Needful
Enough
Harmony
Kindly

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Life's objective is life itself.
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As in Rome there is, apart from the Romans, a population of statues, so apart from this real world there is a world of illusion, almost more potent, in which most men live.
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Let everyone sweep in front of his own door, and the whole world will be clean.
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Man... knows only when he is satisfied and when he suffers, and only his sufferings and his satisfactions instruct him concerning himself, teach him what to seek and what to avoid. For the rest, man is a confused creature he knows not whence he comes or whither he goes, he knows little of the world, and above all, he knows little of himself.
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It is a very hard and troublesome thing to dispose of whole, half, and quarter-mistakes to sift them and assign the portion of truth to its proper place.
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Never by reflection, but only by doing is self- knowledge possible to one.
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The artist may be well advised to keep his work to himself till it is completed, because no one can readily help him or advise him with it... but the scientist is wiser not to withhold a single finding or a single conjecture from publicity.
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No matter what one says, you can recognize only those matters that are equal to you. Only rulers who possess extraordinary abilities will recognize and esteem properly extraordinary abilities in their subjects and servants.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
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Knowing is not enough we must apply. Willing is not enough we must do.
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On all the peaks lies peace.
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Great necessity elevates man, petty necessity casts him down
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What you desire when young, you have in abundance when old.
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Whoever strikes at marriage either by word or act undermines the foundation of all moral society.
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The most foolish of all errors is for clever young men to believe that they forfeit their originality in recognizing a truth which has already been recognized by others.
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We are our own aptest deceiver.
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Upon the creatures we have made, we are, ourselves, at last, dependent.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
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Self-knowledge comes from knowing other men.
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If one has not read the newspapers for some months and then reads them all together, one sees, as one never saw before, how much time is wasted with this kind of literature.
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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.
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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.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe