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Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Quotes - Page 53

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The smallest hair throws its shadow. [Ger., Das kleinste Harr wirft seinen Schatten.]

The smallest hair throws its shadow. [Ger., Das kleinste Harr wirft seinen Schatten.]

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Hair, Shadow, Trifles

Woman is mistress of the art of completely imbittering the life of the person on whom she depends.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Art, Women, Mistress

Men are so inclined to content themselves with what is commonest; the spirit and the senses so easily grow dead to the impressions of the beautiful and perfect, that every one should study, by all methods, to nourish in his mind the faculty of feeling these things. ...For this reason, 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 Wolfgang von Goethe
Beautiful, Song, Men
Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre bk. 5, ch. 1 (1795 - 1796)

Only the soul that loves is happy

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Love Is, Soul

Beautiful is greater than Good, for it includes the Good.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Beauty, Beautiful, Greater

One's roused by this, another finds that fit: Each loves the play for what he brings to it.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Play, Fit, Theater
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1984). “Faust”

Character calls forth character.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Character
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (2015). “Maxims and Reflections”, p.56, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

After all, poets shouldn't be their own interpreters and shouldn't carefully dissect their poems into everyday prose; that would mean the end of being poets. Poets send their creations into the world, it is up to the reader, the aesthetician, and the critic to determine what they wanted to say with their creations.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Mean, Poetry, Everyday

What right those who govern have to govern they don't question, they just govern. Whether the people have a right to depose them that doesn't concern them. All they are concerned with is that the people will not be tempted to depose them.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
People, Revolution, Concern

If you have a great work in your head, nothing else thrives near it; all other thoughts are repelled, and the pleasure of life itself is for the time lost.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Pleasure, Great Work, Lost
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Johann Peter Eckermann (2014). “Conversations of Goethe with Johann Peter Eckermann”, p.39, Ravenio Books

I have heard myself accused of being an opponent, an enemy of mathematics, which no one can value more highly than I, for it accomplishes the very thing whose achievement has been denied me.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Achievement, Enemy, Opponents

Everything factual is, in a sense, theory. The blue of the sky exhibits the basic laws of chromatics. There is no sense in looking for something behind phenomena: they are theory.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Sky, Blue, Law

Basic characteristics of an individual organism: to divide, to unite, to merge into the universal, to abide in the particular, to transform itself, to define itself, and as living things tend to appear under a thousand conditions, to arise and vanish, to solidify and melt, to freeze and flow, to expand and contract. Since these effects occur together, any or all may occur at the same moment.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Life, Science, Together

When we see the many grave-stones which have fallen in, which have been defaced by the footsteps of the congregation, which lie buried under the ruins of the churches, that have themselves crumbled together over them; we may fancy the life after death to be as a second life, into which man enters in the figure, or the picture or the inscription, and lives longer there than when he was really alive. But this figure also, this second existence, dies out too, sooner or later. Time will not allow himself to be cheated of his rights with the monuments of men or with themselves.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Lying, Men, Rights

The unnatural, that too is natural.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Wisdom, Nature, Sexuality

Does not man lack the force at the very point where he needs it most? And when he soars upward in joy, or sinks down in suffering, is not checked in both, is he not returned again to the dull, cold sphere of awareness, just when he was longing to lose himself in the fullness of the infinite.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Men, Joy, Suffering
Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe (1990). “Sammlung”, Burns & Oates

Every man must form himself as a particular being, seeking, however, to attain that general idea of which all mankind are constituents.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Character, Men, Ideas
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Johann Peter Eckermann (1949). “Words of Goethe: being the conversations of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe”

The style of an author is a faithful copy of his mind.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Faithful, Style, Mind

We accept every person in the world as that for which he gives himself out, only he must give himself out for something. We can put up with the unpleasant more easily than we can endure the insignificant.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Giving, World, Accepting
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (2013). “Delphi Works of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (Illustrated)”, p.770, Delphi Classics

As all Nature's thousands changes But one changeless God proclaim; So in Art's wide kingdom ranges One sole meaning still the same: This is Truth, eternal Reason, Which from Beauty takes its dress, And serene through time and season Stands aye in loveliness.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Art, Dresses, Kingdoms
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1947). “Travel years”

Thou tremblest before anticipated ills, and still bemoanest what thou never losest.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Anticipation, Stills

To venture an opinion is like moving a piece at chess: it may be taken, but it forms the beginning of a game that is won.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Taken, Moving, Games
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (2015). “Maxims and Reflections”, p.72, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

For to give is the business of the rich. [Lat., Denn Geben ist Sache des Reichen.]

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Giving, Rich

Thou art in the end what thou art. Put on wigs with millions of curls, set thy foot upon ell-high rocks. Thou abidest ever--what thou art.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Art, Rocks, Feet

There is a politeness of the heart; this is closely allied to love.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Heart, Politeness
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, John Stuart Blackie (1883). “The Wisdom of Goethe”, Edinburgh, W. Blackwood

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