"There is nothing so terrible as activity without insight."
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Johann Wolfgang von Goethe quotes (page 15 of 88)
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"To a valet no man is a hero."
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"There is nothing insignificant in the world. It all depends on how one looks at it."
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"A judge who cannot punish, in the end associates themselves with the criminal."
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"Never by reflection, but only by doing is self- knowledge possible to one."
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"Distance... is like futurity. A dim vastness is spread before our souls; the perceptions of our mind are as obscure as those of our vision... But alas! when we have attained our object, when the distant 'there' becomes the present 'here,' all is changed; we are as poor and circumscribed as ever, and our souls still languish for unattainable happiness."
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"Someday someone will write a pathology of experimental physics and bring to light all those swindles which subvert our reason, beguile our judgement and, what is worse, stand in the way of any practical progress. The phenomena must be freed once and for all from their grim torture chamber of empiricism, mechanism, and dogmatism; they must be brought before the jury of man's common sense."
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"Letters are among the most significant memorial a person can leave behind them."
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"The aim of living is life itself."
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"We always hope, and in all things it is better to hope than to despair."
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"Clever people are always the best conversations lexicon."
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"I call architecture frozen music."
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"If you start to think of your physical and moral condition, you usually find that you are sick."
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"He who does not know foreign languages does not know anything about his own."
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"The worst is that the very hardest thinking will not bring thoughts. They must come like good children of God and cry, "Here we are." You expend effort and energy thinking hard. Then, after you have given up, they come sauntering in with their hands in their pockets. If the effort had not been made to open the door, however, who knows when they could have come."
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"Piety is not a goal but a means to attain through the purest peace of mind the highest culture."
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"Over all the mountain tops is peace. In all treetops you perceive scarcely a breath. The little birds in the forest are silent. Wait then; soon, you too, will have peace."
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"Blood is a very special juice."
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"A leaf that is destined to grow large is full of grooves and wrinkles at the start. Now if one has no patience and wants it smooth offhand like a willow leaf, there is trouble ahead."
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"A teacher who can arouse a feeling for one single good action, for one single good poem, accomplishes more than he who fills our memory with rows and rows of natural objects, classified with name and form."
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