"The miller imagines that the corn grows only to make his mill turn."
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Quote collection
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe quotes (page 49 of 88)
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"No wonder we are all more or less pleased with mediocrity, since it leaves us at rest, and gives the same comfortable feeling as when one associates with his equals."
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"Man believes himself always greater than he is, and is esteemed less than he is worth."
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"Our hands we open of our own free will, and the good flies, which we can never recall."
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"We learn to treasure what is above this earth; we long for revelation, which nowhere burns more purely and more beautifully than in the New Testament."
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"The misfortune in the state is, that nobody can enjoy life in peace, but that everybody must govern; and in art, that nobody will enjoy what has been produced, but that every one wants to reproduce on his own account."
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"Art is a severe business; most serious when employed in grand and sacred objects. The artist stands higher than art, higher than the object. He uses art for his purposes, and deals with the object after his own fashion."
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"Let there be truth between us."
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"Man is a simple being, and however rich, varied, and unfathomable he may be, the cycle of his situations is soon run through."
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"The little that is completed, vanishes from the sight of one who looks forward to what is still to do."
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"Over the trackless past, somewhere, Lie the lost days of our tropic youth, Only regained by faith and prayer, Only recalled by prayer and plaint, Each lost day has its patron saint!"
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"I always had an aversion to your apostles of freedom; each but sought for himself freedom to do what he liked."
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"If I work incessantly to the last, nature owes me another form of existence when the present one collapses."
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"What you have inherited from your forefathers, it takes work to make it your own."
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"Lamps make oil-spots and candles need snuffing; it is only the light of heaven that shines pure and leaves no stain."
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"The march of intellect, which licks all the world into shape, has even reached the devil."
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"Let mental culture go on advancing, let the natural sciences progress in even greater extent and depth, and the human mind widen itself as much as it desires: beyond the elevation and moral culture of Christianity, as it shines forth in the Gospels, it will not go."
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"Faust: Who holds the devil, let him hold him well, He hardly will be caught a second time."
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"Secrecy has many advantages, for when you tell someone the purpose of any object right away, they often think there is nothing to it."
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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."
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