"Rest not Life is sweeping by go and dare before you die. Something mighty and sublime, leave behind to conquer time."
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Johann Wolfgang von Goethe quotes (page 36 of 88)
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"For what one has in black and white, One can carry home in comfort."
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"The summit charms us, the steps to it do not; with the heights before our eyes, we like to linger in the plain. It is only a part of art that can be taught; but the artist needs the whole. He who is only half instructed speaks much and is always wrong; who knows it wholly is content with acting and speaks seldom or late."
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"Many young painters would never have taken their pencils in hand if they could have felt, known, and understood, early enough, what really produced a master like Raphael."
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"Deny yourself! You must deny yourself! That is the song that never ends."
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"Sweet moonlight, shining full and clear, Why do you light my torture here? How often have you seen me toil, Burning last drops of midnight oil. On books and papers as I read, My friend, your mournful light you shed. If only I could flee this den And walk the mountain-tops again, Through moonlit meadows make my way, In mountain caves with spirits play - Released from learning's musty cell, Your healing dew would make me well!"
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"The highest happiness of man ... is to have probed what is knowable and quietly to revere what is unknowable."
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"Daily life is more instructive than the most effective book."
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"Tis Lilith. Who? Adam's first wife is she. Beware the lure within her lovely tresses, The splendid sole adornment of her hair; When she succeeds therewith a youth to snare, Not soon again she frees him from her jesses."
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"Of all thieves, fools are the worst; they rob you of time and temper."
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"When the boy begins to understand that the visible point is preceded by an invisible point, that the shortest distance between two points is conceived as a straight line before it is ever drawn with pencil and paper...the fountain of all thought has been opened to him...the philosopher can reveal him nothing new, as a geometrician he has discovered the basis of all thought."
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"We are shaped and fashioned by what we love.- Henry Ward Beecher - I never knew how to worship until I knew how to love."
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"Beware of dissipating your powers; strive constantly to concentrate them."
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"All ages have said and repeated that one should strive to know one's self. This is a strange demand which no one up to now has measured up to and, strictly considered, no one should. With all their study and effort, people are directed to what is outside, to the world about them, and they are kept busy coming to know this and to master it to the extent that their purposes require. . . . How can you come to know yourself? Never by thinking, always by doing. Try to do your duty, and you'll know right away what you amount to. And what is your duty? Whatever the day calls for."
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"Every man bears something within him that, if it were publicly announced, would excite feelings of aversion."
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"We often feel that we lack something, and seem to see that very quality in someone else, promptly attributing all our own qualities to him too, and a kind of ideal contentment as well. And so the happy mortal is a model of complete perfection--which we have ourselves created."
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"I could never have known so well how paltry men are, and how little they care for really high aims, if I had not tested them by my scientific researches. Thus I saw that most men only care for science so far as they get a living by it, and that they worship even error when it affords them a subsistence."
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"We love a girl for very different qualities than understanding. We love her for her beauty, her youth, her mirth, her confidingness, her character, with its faults, caprices and God knows what other inexpressible charms; but we do not love her understanding."
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"Legislators and revolutionaries who promise both equality and liberty are visionaries and charlatans."
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"The flowers of life are but visionary. How many pass away and leave no trace behind! How few yield any fruit,--and the fruit itself, how rarely does it ripen! And yet there are flowers enough; and is it not strange, my friend, that we should suffer the little that does really ripen to rot, decay, and perish unenjoyed?"
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