Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Quotes - Page 65

• I hate every violent overthrow, because as much is destroyed as is gained by it.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Hate, Rebellion, Violent

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Johann Peter Eckermann (2014). “Conversations of Goethe with Johann Peter Eckermann”, p.147, Ravenio Books

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• Lord Byron is only great as a poet; as soon as he reflects he is a child.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Children, Reflection, Poet

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Johann Peter Eckermann (2014). “Conversations of Goethe with Johann Peter Eckermann”, p.121, Ravenio Books

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• Modern poets add a lot of water to their ink.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Water, Poetry, Ink

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, W. B. Rönnfeldt (1898*). “Goethe's Criticisms, Reflections, and Maxims”

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• One is never satisfied with the portrait of a person that one knows.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Portraits, Portraiture, Self Portrait

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• There is no greater consolation for mediocrity than that the genius is not immortal.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Genius, Mediocrity, Immortal

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (2015). “Maxims and Reflections”, p.111, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

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• To every one [Nature] appears in a form of his own. She hides herself in a thousand names and terms, and is always the same.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Nature, Names, Form

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• Nature! We are surrounded by her and locked in her clasp: powerless to leave her, and powerless to come closer to her. Unasked and unwarned she takes us up into the whirl of her dance, and hurries on with us till we are weary and fall from her arms.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Nature, Fall, Arms

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (2013). “Delphi Works of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (Illustrated)”, p.3594, Delphi Classics

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• Who enslaves another's manhood with weak human power alone, Lays a heavier yoke of bondage thoughtlessly upon his own.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Slavery, Yoke, Weak

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• There is nothing worth thinking but it has been thought before; we must only try to think it again.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Thinking, Trying, Has Beens

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (2015). “Maxims and Reflections”, p.29, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

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• It is not always needful for truth to take a definite shape; it is enough if it hovers about us like a spirit and produces harmony; if it is wafted through the air like the sound of a bell, grave and kindly.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Truth, Air, Bells

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (2015). “Maxims and Reflections”, p.51, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

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• If the word is not dead when it reaches the hearer, he murders it at once by a contradiction, a stipulation, a condition, a digression, an interruption, and all the thousand tricks of conversation.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Murder, Contradiction, Conversation

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (2015). “Maxims and Reflections”, p.134, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

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• We find from experience that yellow excites a warm and agreeable impression.... The eye is gladdened, the heart expanded and cheered, a glow seems at once to breathe toward us.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Eye, Heart, Yellow

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (2012). “Theory of Colours”, p.169, Courier Corporation

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• It is a very hard and troublesome thing to dispose of whole, half, and quarter-mistakes; to sift them and assign the portion of truth to its proper place.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Mistake, Half, Quarters

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (2015). “Maxims and Reflections”, p.51, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

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• He who is wise puts aside all claims which may dissipate his attention, and confining himself to one branch excels in that.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Wise, Attention, Branches

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

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• Deny yourself! You must deny yourself! That is the song that never ends.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Life, Success, Song

  'Faust' pt. 1 (1808) 'Studierzimmer'

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• The web of this world is woven of Necessity and Chance. Woe to him who has accustomed himself from his youth up to find something necessary in what is capricious, and who would ascribe something like reason to Chance and make a religion of surrendering to it.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Atheism, World, Woe

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• The world only goes forward because of those who oppose it.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  World

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• The soul of man is like to water; from Heaven it cometh, to Heaven it riseth
  And then returning to earth, forever alternating.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Men, Water, Forever

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1882). “The Poems of Goethe”, Richard West

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• The true, prescriptive artist strives after artistic truth; the lawless artist, following blind instinct, after an appearance of naturalness. The one leads to the highest peaks of art, the other to its lowest depths.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Art, Depth, Blind

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, John Gage (1980). “Goethe on Art”, p.11, Univ of California Press

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• America, you have it better than our continent, the old one.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  America, Continents

  Almanac for the Muses (1831)

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• An actor should take lessons from a painter and a sculptor.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Acting, Actors, Lessons

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• Few rash of any modern nation have a proper sense of an aesthetical whole; they praise and blame by parts; they are charmed by passages. And who has greater reason to rejoice in this than actors, since the stage is ever but a patched and piecemeal matter?

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Acting, Matter, Actors

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• Architecture is frozen music.
  [Ger., Die Backunst ist eine erstarrte Musik.]

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Frozen, Architecture, Dies

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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.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Fashion, Art, Serious

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• In art, to express the infinite one should suggest infinitely more than is expressed.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Art, Infinite, Should

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