Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Quotes - Page 62

• 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.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Art, Taken, Hands

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Johann Peter Eckermann (2014). “Conversations of Goethe with Johann Peter Eckermann”, p.142, Ravenio Books

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• The connoisseur of art must be able to appreciate what is simply beautiful, but the common run of people is satisfied with ornament.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Beautiful, Running, Art

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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.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Art, Enjoy Life, Want

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Johann Peter Eckermann (2014). “Conversations of Goethe with Johann Peter Eckermann”, p.141, Ravenio Books

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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.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Art, Eye, Acting

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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.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Long, Treasure, Earth

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• It is commonly the personal character of a writer which gives him his public significance. It is not imparted by his genius. Napoleon said of Corneille, "Were he living I would make him a king;" but he did not read him. He read Racine, yet he said nothing of the kind of Racine.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Kings, Character, Giving

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• Our hands we open of our own free will, and the good flies, which we can never recall.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Hands, Free Will, Benevolence

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• Blood is a juice of rarest quality.
  [Ger., Blut ist ein ganz beondrer Saft.]

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Blood, Quality, Juice

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• Dispel not, the happy delusions of children.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Children, Delusion

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• In praising or loving a child, we love and praise not that which is, but that which we hope for.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Children, Praise

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• We should treat children as God does us, who makes us happiest when He leaves us under the influence of innocent delusions.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Children, Childhood, Doe

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• What in us the women leave uncultivated, children cultivate when we retain them near us.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Children

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Thomas Carlyle, Henry Duff Traill (1824). “Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship and Travels”, p.49

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• A school of art or of anything else is to be looked on as a single individual, who keeps talking to himself for a hundred years, and feels an extreme satisfaction with his own circle of favorite ideas, be they ever so silly.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Art, Silly, School

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

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• Man believes himself always greater than he is, and is esteemed less than he is worth.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Believe, Men, Conceit

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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.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Giving, Feelings, Mediocrity

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• The miller imagines that the corn grows only to make his mill turn.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Corn, Imagine, Mills

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• Reasonable men are the best dictionaries of conversation.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Men, Conversation, Dictionary

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• As to the value of conversions, God alone can judge. God alone can know how wide are the steps which the soul has to take before it can approach to a community with Him, to the dwelling of the perfect, or to the intercourse and friendship of higher natures.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Dwelling, Perfect, Judging

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• Every individual who is not creative has a negative, narrow, exclusive taste and succeeds in depriving creative being of its energy and life.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Creativity, Creative, Energy

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• No, no! The devil is an egotist,
  And is not apt, without why or wherefore,
  "For God's sake," others to assist.
  [Ger., Nein, nein! Der Teufel ist ein Egoist
  Und thut nicht leicht um Gottes Willen,
  Was einem Andern nutzlich ist.]

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Devil, Sake

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• All sects seem to me to be right in what they assert, and wrong in what they deny.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Doctrine, Deny, Seems

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• Duty is the demand of the hour.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Demand, Hours, Duty

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

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• But what is your duty? What the day demands.
  [Ger., Was aber ist deine Pflicht? Die Forderung des Tages.]

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Demand, Duty, Dies

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• How happy he who can still hope to lift himself from this sea of error! What we know not, that we are anxious to possess, and cannot use what we know.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Errors, Sea, Use

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• The march of intellect, which licks all the world into shape, has even reached the devil.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Devil, World, Shapes

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1833). “Faust, a dramatic poem, tr. into Engl. prose with notes by the translator of Savigny's 'Of the vocation of our age for legislation'”, p.95

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