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Perfection is the measure of heaven, and the wish to be perfect the measure of man.
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
Heaven
Perfect
Wish
Men
Measure
Perfection
More quotes by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
What is important in life is life, and not the result of life.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
What government is the best? That which teaches us to govern ourselves. [Ger., Welche Regierung die beste sei? Diejenige die uns lehrt uns selbst zu regieren.]
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
A wife is a gift bestowed upon a man to reconcile him to the loss of paradise.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
He only fears men who does not know them, and he who avoids them will soon misjudge them.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Great passions are incurable diseases.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
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.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Truth has to be repeated constantly, because Error also is being preached all the time, and not just by a few, but by the multitude. In the Press and Encyclopaedias, in Schools and Universities, everywhere Error holds sway, feeling happy and comfortable in the knowledge of having Majority on its side.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
One is led astray alike by sympathy and coldness, by praise and by blame
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
The greatest thing in this world is not so much where we stand as in what direction we are moving.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
When the healthy nature of man acts as a whole, when he feels himself to be in the world as in a great, beautiful, noble, and valued whole, when harmonious ease affords him a pure and free delight, then the universe, if it could experience itself, would exult, as having attained its goal, and admire the climax of its own becoming and essence.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Unlike grown ups, children have little need to deceive themselves.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Nature! We are surrounded by her and locked in her clasp: powerless to leave her, and powerless to come closer to her. Unasked and unwarned she takes us up into the whirl of her dance, and hurries on with us till we are weary and fall from her arms.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
There is no past we can bring back by longing for it. There is only an eternal now that builds and creates out of the past something new and better.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Architecture is crystallized music.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Mannerism is always longing to have done, and has no true enjoyment in work. A genuine, really great talent, on the other hand, has its greatest happiness in execution.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
What we don't understand we don't possess.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
One is never satisfied with a portrait of persons whom one knows. That is why I have always pitied portraitists. One demands so seldom of others the impossible, but demands just that of the portraitists.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
The assault of our enemies is not part of our life it is only part of our experience we throw it off and guard ourselves against it as against frost, storm, rain, hail, or any other of the external evils which may be expected to happen.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
What is not fully understood is not possessed.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
The most original of authors are not so because they advance what is new, but more because they know how to say something, as if it had never been said before.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe