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Whoever, in middle age, attempts to realize the wishes and hopes of his early youth, invariably deceives himself. Each ten years of a man's life has its own fortunes, its own hopes, its own desires.

– Johann von Goethe

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Death is Nature's expert advice to get plenty of Life.

– Johann von Goethe

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We are shaped and fashioned by what we love.

– Johann von Goethe

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Nature understands no jesting. She is always true, always serious, always severe. She is always right, and the errors are always those of man.

– Johann von Goethe

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To know someone here or there with whom you can feel there is understanding in spite of distances or thoughts expressed

– Johann von Goethe

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Age does not make us childish, as some say it only finds us true children still.

– Johann von Goethe

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Daring ideas are like chessmen moved forward. They may be beaten, but they may start a winning game.

– Johann von Goethe

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I find the great thing in this world is, not so much where we stand, as in what direction we are moving.

– Johann von Goethe

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Life can only be understood backwards but it must be lived forwards.

– Johann von Goethe

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I respect the man who knows distinctly what he wishes. The greater part of all mischief in the world arises from the fact that men do not sufficiently understand their own aims. They have undertaken to build a tower, and spend no more labor on the foundation than would be necessary to erect a hut.

– Johann von Goethe

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He is happiest, be he king or peasant, who finds peace in his home.

– Johann von Goethe

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Character, in great and little things, means carrying through what you feel able to do.

– Johann von Goethe

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Life is the childhood of our immortality.

– Johann von Goethe

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Nothing is more damaging to a new truth than an old error.

– Johann von Goethe

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The world is so empty if one thinks only of mountains, rivers and cities but to know someone here and there who thinks and feels with us, and though distant, is close to us in spirit - this makes the earth for us an inhabited garden.

– Johann von Goethe

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Whenever I hear people talking about 'liberal ideas,' I am always astounded that men should love to fool themselves with empty sounds. An idea should never be liberal it must be vigorous, positive, and without loose ends so that it may fulfill its divine mission and be productive. The proper place for liberality is in the realm of the emotions.

– Johann von Goethe

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All theory, dear friend, is gray, but the golden tree of life springs ever green.

– Johann von Goethe

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I love those who yearn for the impossible.

– Johann von Goethe

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Life is not anything, but an opportunity for something.

– Johann von Goethe

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The ground that a good man treads is hallowed.

– Johann von Goethe

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The first and last thing required of genius is the love of truth.

– Johann von Goethe

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Knowing is not enough we must apply. Willing is not enough we must do.

– Johann von Goethe

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I call architecture frozen music.

– Johann von Goethe

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The beginning of faith is the beginning of fruitfulness but the beginning of unbelief, however glittering, is empty.

– Johann von Goethe

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Know'st thou the land where the lemon-trees bloom, Where the gold orange glows in the deep thicket's gloom, Where a wind ever soft from the blue heaven blows, And the groves are of laurel and myrtle and rose

– Johann von Goethe

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A clever man commits no minor blunders.

– Johann von Goethe

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Love and desire are the spirit's wings to great deeds.

– Johann von Goethe

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Nothing shows a man's character more than what he laughs at.

– Johann von Goethe

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A correct answer is like an affectionate kiss.

– Johann von Goethe

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Plunge boldly into the thick of life

– Johann von Goethe

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What is not fully understood is not possessed.

– Johann von Goethe

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A life without love, without the presence of the beloved, is nothing but a mere magic-latern show. We draw out slide after slide, swiftly tiring of each, and pushing it back to make haste for the next.

– Johann von Goethe

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A man's errors are what make him amiable.

– Johann von Goethe

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A noble person attracts noble people, and knows how to hold on to them.

– Johann von Goethe

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All truly wise thoughts have been thought already thousands of times but to make them truly ours, we must think them over again honestly, till they take root in our personal experience.

– Johann von Goethe

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Anecdotes and maxims are rich treasures to the man of the world, for he knows how to introduce the former at fit place in conversation.

– Johann von Goethe

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Art is long, life short judgment difficult, opportunity transient.

– Johann von Goethe

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Certain flaws are necessary for the whole. It would seem strange if old friends lacked certain quirks.

– Johann von Goethe

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Character develops itself in the stream of life.

– Johann von Goethe

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Correction does much, but encouragement does more.

– Johann von Goethe

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Courage and modesty are the most unequivocal of virtues, for they are of a kind that hypocrisy cannot imitate they too have this quality in common, that they are expressed by the same color.

– Johann von Goethe

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Difficulties increase the nearer we approach our goal.

– Johann von Goethe

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Dream no small dreams for they have no power to move the hearts of men.

– Johann von Goethe

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Everybody wants to be somebody nobody wants to grow.

– Johann von Goethe

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Everything a human being wants can be divided into four components love, adventure, power and fame.

– Johann von Goethe

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Everything in the world may be endured except continued prosperity.

– Johann von Goethe

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First and last, what is demanded of genius is love of truth.

– Johann von Goethe

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God could cause us considerable embarrassment by revealing all the secrets of nature to us we should not know what to do for sheer apathy and boredom.

– Johann von Goethe

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He who seizes the right moment is the right man.

– Johann von Goethe

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He who wishes to exert a useful influence must be careful to insult nothing. Let him not be troubled by what seems absurd, but concentrate his energies to the creation of what is good. He must not demolish, but build. He must raise temples where mankind may come and partake of the purest pleasure.

– Johann von Goethe

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I can tell you, honest friend, what to believe believe life it teaches better than book or orator.

– Johann von Goethe

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I never believed in trying to do anything. Whatever I set out to do I found I had already accomplished.

– Johann von Goethe

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If a man writes a book, let him set down only what he knows. I have guesses enough of my own.

– Johann von Goethe

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If I love you, what business is it of yours

– Johann von Goethe

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If your treat an individual ... as if he were what he ought to be and could be, he will become what he ought to be and could be.

– Johann von Goethe

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It is a mistake for a taciturn, serious-minded woman to marry a jovial man, but not for a serious-minded man to marry a lighthearted woman.

– Johann von Goethe

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It is not enough to have knowledge, one must also apply it. It is not enough to have wishes, one must also accomplish.

– Johann von Goethe

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Just trust yourself, then you will know how to live.

– Johann von Goethe

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Love grants in a moment what toil can hardly achieve in an age.

– Johann von Goethe

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Love is an ideal thing, marriage a real thing a confusion of the real with the ideal never goes unpunished.

– Johann von Goethe

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Man is not born to solve the problem of the universe, but to find out what he has to do and to restrain himself within the limits of his comprehension.

– Johann von Goethe

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Man supposes that he directs his life and governs his actions, when his existence is irretrievably under the control of destiny.

– Johann von Goethe

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Mathematicians are like Frenchmen whatever you say to them they translate into their own language and forthwith it is something entirely different.

– Johann von Goethe

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My poor head is in such a whirl, my mind is all in bits.

– Johann von Goethe

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No one would talk much in society, if he knew how often he misunderstood others.

– Johann von Goethe

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Nothing is as terrible to see as ignorance in action.

– Johann von Goethe

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Old age, believe me, is a good and pleasant thing. It is true you are gently shouldered off the stage, but then you are given such a comfortable front stall as spectator.

– Johann von Goethe

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One man's word is no man's word we should quietly hear both sides.

– Johann von Goethe

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One must ask children and birds how cherries and strawberries taste.

– Johann von Goethe

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One ought, every day at least, to hear a little song, read a good poem, see a fine picture, and, if it were possible, to speak a few reasonable words.

– Johann von Goethe

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Our friends show us what we can do our enemies teach us what we must do.

– Johann von Goethe

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Personality is everything in art and poetry.

– Johann von Goethe

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Talent develops in tranquillity, character in the full current of human life.

– Johann von Goethe

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Talents are best nurtured in solitude character is best formed in the stormy billows of the world.

– Johann von Goethe

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That is the true season of love, when we believe that we alone can love, that no one could ever have loved so before us, and that no one will love in the same way after us.

– Johann von Goethe

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The artist alone sees spirits. But after he has told of their appearing to him, everybody sees them.

– Johann von Goethe

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The best fortune that can fall to a man is that which corrects his defects and makes up for his failings.

– Johann von Goethe

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The highest happiness of man ... is to have probed what is knowable and quietly to revere what is unknowable.

– Johann von Goethe

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The intelligent man finds almost everything ridiculous, the sensible man hardly anything.

– Johann von Goethe

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The man of understanding finds everything laughable.

– Johann von Goethe

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The man who acts never has any conscience no one has any conscience but the man who thinks.

– Johann von Goethe

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The most original authors are not so because they advance what is new, but because they put what they have to say as if it had never been said before.

– Johann von Goethe

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The phrases that men hear or repeat continually, end by becoming convictions and ossify the organs of intelligence.

– Johann von Goethe

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The society of women is the element of good manners.

– Johann von Goethe

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The unnatural, that too is natural.

– Johann von Goethe

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There is a courtesy of the heart; it is allied to love. From it springs the purest courtesy in the outward behavior.

– Johann von Goethe

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Things which matter most must never be at the mercy of things which matter least.

– Johann von Goethe

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Thinking is easy, acting is difficult, and to put one's thoughts into action is the most difficult thing in the world.

– Johann von Goethe

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To be loved for what one is, is the greatest exception. The great majority love in others only what they lend him, their own selves, their version of him.

– Johann von Goethe

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To live as one likes is plebian the noble man aspires to order and law.

– Johann von Goethe

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Treat people as if they were what they ought to be and you help them to become what they are capable of being.

– Johann von Goethe

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Treat people as if they were what they ought to be, and you help them to become what they are capable of being.

– Johann von Goethe

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Viewed from the summit of reason, all life looks like a malignant disease and the world like a madhouse.

– Johann von Goethe

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We are never deceived we deceive ourselves.

– Johann von Goethe

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We do not have to visit a madhouse to find disordered minds our planet is the mental institution of the universe.

– Johann von Goethe

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We must always change, renew, rejuvenate ourselves otherwise we harden.

– Johann von Goethe

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Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it.

– Johann von Goethe

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When we treat man as he is, we make him worse than he is when we treat him as if he already were what he potentially could be, we make him what he should be.

– Johann von Goethe

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Who never ate his bread in sorrow, Who never spent the darksome hours Weeping, and watching for the morrow,-- He knows ye not, ye gloomy Powers.

– Johann von Goethe

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