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Writing is busy idleness.

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
Idleness
Busy
Writing

More quotes by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

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I have found a paper of mine among some others in which I call architecture 'petrified music.' Really there is something in this the tone of mind produced by architecture approaches the effect of music.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
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He who enjoys doing and enjoys what he has done is happy.
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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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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Here too it’s masquerade, I find: As everywhere, the dance of mind. I grasped a lovely masked procession, And caught things from a horror show… I’d gladly settle for a false impression, If it would last a little longer, though.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
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Out of moderation a pure happiness springs.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
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But one must know where one stands, and where the others wish to go.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
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Nature! We are enveloped and embraced by her, incapable of emerging from her and incapable of entering her more deeply. Unbidden and unwarned, she receives us into the circuits of her dance, drifting onward with us herself, until we grow tired and drop from her arms.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
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Old age is never honored among us, but only indulged, as childhood is and old men lose one of the most precious rights of man,--that of being judged by their peers.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
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Behavior is the mirror in which everyone shows their image.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
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Those only obtain love, for the most part, who seek it not.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
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Painting predicates what man wants to see, and what man ought to see, not what he ordinarily sees.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
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Of the truly creative no one is ever master it must be left to go its own way.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
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Deeply earnest and thoughtful people stand on shaky footing with the public.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
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Translators can be considered as busy matchmakers who praise as extremely desirable a half-veiled beauty. They arouse an irresistible yearning for the original.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
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The greatest joy of a thinking man is to have searched the explored and to quietly revere the unexplored.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
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With knowledge comes more doubt.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
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Man can only endure a certain degree of unhappiness what is beyond that either annihilates him or passes by him and leaves him apathetic
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
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If each one does their duty as an individual and if each one works in their own proper vocation, it will be right with the whole.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
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I examine my own being, and find there a world, but a world rather of imagination and dim desires, than of distinctness and living power. Then everything swims before my senses, and I smile and dream while pursuing my way through the world.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe