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It is a maxim of wise government to treat people not as they should be but as they actually are.

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
Government
People
Maxim
Maxims
Treat
Treats
Wise
Actually

More quotes by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

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We are surrounded by abysses, but the greatest of all depths is in our own heart, and an irresistible leaning leads us there. Draw thyself from thyself!
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Were not the eye made to receive the rays of the sun, it could not behold the sun if the peculiar power of God lay not in us, how could the godlike charm us?
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
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For usually people resist as long as they can to dismiss the fool they harbor in their bosom, they resist to confess a major mistake or to admit a truth that makes them despair.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
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If in the infinite you want to stride, Just walk in the finite to every side.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
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I wait for the morning of my tears
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
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Happiness is a ball after which we run wherever it rolls, and we push it with our feet when it stops.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
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Originality provokes originality.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
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It is better to be deceived by one's friends than to deceive them.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
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Energy will do anything that can be done in the world and no talents, no circumstances, no opportunities will make a two-legged animal a man without it.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
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Everyone is deceived in his hopes, cheated in his expectations.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
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I curse all negative purism that tells me not to use a word from another language that either expresses something that my own language cannot or does that in a more delicate manner.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
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Beauty and Genius must be kept afar if one would avoid becoming their slave.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
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You will find the most pronounced hatred of other nations on the lowest cultural levels. There is, though, a level where the hatred disappears completely and where one so to speak stands above the nations and where one experiences fortune or misfortune of a neighboring country as if they had happened to one's own.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
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When I make a mistake everyone can see it, but not when I lie.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
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The arts are the salt of the earth as salt relates to food, the arts relate to technology.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
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Only the heart without a stain knows perfect ease. [Ger., Ganz unbefleckt geniesst sich nur das Herz.]
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
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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.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
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Every step of life shows much caution is required.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
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The eternal feminine doth draw us upward. [Ger., Das Ewig-Weibliche zieht uns hinan.]
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
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When you lose interest in anything, you also lose the memory for it.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe