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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

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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
Impossible
Others
Pitied
Persons
Portrait
Always
Portraits
Never
Seldom
Demands
Satisfied
Demand

More quotes by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

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There are two things children should get from their parents: roots and wings.
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One must not criticize that which is common since it remains always the same.
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Those who hope for no other life are dead even for this.
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Whoever would do good in the world, ought not to deal in censure. We ought not to destroy, but rather construct.
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The suffering may be moral or physical and in my opinion it is just as absurd to call a man a coward who destroys himself, as to call a man a coward who dies of a malignant fever.
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He only fears men who does not know them, and he who avoids them will soon misjudge them.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
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If one doesn't know one's own country, one doesn't have standards for foreign countries.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
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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.
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It is in the half fools and the half wise that the greatest danger lies.
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To rule is easy, to govern difficult.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
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No one feels himself easy in a garden which does not look like the open country.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
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So long as you live and work, you will be misunderstood to that you must resign yourself once and for all. Be silent!
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
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The light is there, and colors surround us. However, if there were no light nor colors in our own eye, we wouldn't perceive such things outside of us.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
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Since Time is not a person we can overtake when he is gone, let us honor him with mirth and cheerfulness of heart while he is passing.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
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Opponents fancy they refute us when they repeat their own opinion and pay no attention to ours.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
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Thou art in the end what thou art. Put on wigs with millions of curls, set thy foot upon ell-high rocks. Thou abidest ever--what thou art.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
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Superstition is part of the poetry of life.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
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A person is never happy till their vague strivings has itself marked out its proper limitations.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
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And those whom once my song had cheered and gladdened, If still they live, rove through the world now saddened.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
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Names are but noise and smoke, Obscuring heavenly light.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe