Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Quotes - Page 69

• Music is either sacred or secular. The sacred agrees with its dignity, and here has its greatest effect on life, an effect that remains the same through all ages and epochs. Secular music should be cheerful throughout.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Secular Music, Age, Cheerful

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• Everyone believes in his youth that the world really began with him, and that all merely exists for his sake.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Educational, Philosophy, Believe

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1976). “Faust: a tragedy : backgrounds and sources, the author on the drama, contemporary reactions, modern criticism”, W. W. Norton & Company

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• The man of understanding finds everything laughable.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Men, Understanding, He Man

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• While man's desires and aspirations stir he cannot choose but err.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Men, Desire, Aspiration

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1872). “Faust: A Tragedy”, p.203

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• One lives but once in the world.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Life, Philosophy, World

  "Clavigo". Play by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. Act 1, Scene 1, 1774.

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• Time is a strange thing. It is a whimsical tyrant, which in every century has a different face for all that one says and does.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Time, Tyrants, Different Faces

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Johann Peter Eckermann (2014). “Conversations of Goethe with Johann Peter Eckermann”, p.80, Ravenio Books

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• Profoundness, genius, spontaneity, merit, nobility, ingenuity, voice propriety, feeling, discernment, sensibility, good taste, great tone, rightness, courtliness, vivacity, boldness, style, freshness, harmony, perfection, imagination, purity, correctness. The greatest writer of all times. God's most astonishing creation.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Religious, Voice, Imagination

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• Don't say that you want to give, but go ahead and give! You'll never catch up with a mere hope.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Generosity, Giving, Want

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• Where a man has a passion for meditating without the capacity of thinking, a particular idea fixes itself fast, and soon creates a mental disease.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Passion, Men, Thinking

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• How can we know ourselves? Never by reflection, but only through action. Begin at once to do your duty and immediately you will know what is inside you.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Reflection, Action, Duty

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• Whether one show one's self a man of genius in science or compose a song, the only point is, whether the thought, the discovery, the deed, is living and can live on.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Song, Science, Men

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• Mathematics can remove no prejudices and soften no obduracy. It has no influence in sweetening the bitter strife of parties, and in the moral world generally its action is perfectly null.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Party, Prejudice, Null

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

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• If the mass of people hesitate to act, strike with swiftly and with boldness, the brave heart that understands and seizes opportunity can everything.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Inspirational, Heart, Procrastination

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• Men are so constituted that every one undertakes what he sees another successful in, whether he has aptitude for it or not.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Success, Men, Envy

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1850). “Truth and Poetry: from My Own Life; Or, The Autobiography of Goethe”, p.92

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• Taste is only to be educated by contemplation, not of the tolerably good but of the truly excellent. I therefore show you only the best works; and when you are grounded in these, you will have a standard for the rest, which you will know how to value, without overrating them.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Taste, Excellent, Contemplation

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Johann Peter Eckermann, Frédéric Jacob Soret (1850). “Conversations of Goethe with Eckermann and Soret”, p.137

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• I know nothing more mocking than a devil that despairs.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Devil, Despair, Knows

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• Nature reacts not only to physical disease, but also to moral weakness; when the danger increases; she gives us greater courage

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Nature, Giving, Weakness

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• I have found a paper of mine among some others in which I call architecture 'petrified music.' Really there is something in this; the tone of mind produced by architecture approaches the effect of music.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Mind, Paper, Tone

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Johann Peter Eckermann (2014). “Conversations of Goethe with Johann Peter Eckermann”, p.356, Ravenio Books

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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 Wolfgang von Goethe

  Mistake, Women, Serious

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• Everything great and intelligent is in the minority

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Intelligent, Intelligence, Minorities

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• On every mountain height is rest.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Mountain, Height

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

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Men, Intelligence, Phrases

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• The best genius is that which absorbs and assimilates everything without doing the least violence to its fundamental destiny.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Destiny, Violence, Attention

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (2012). “The Goethe Treasury: Selected Prose and Poetry”, p.12, Courier Corporation

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• With knowledge grows doubt.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Doubt, Grows

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (2015). “Maxims and Reflections”, p.88, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

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• Die Mathematiker sind eine Art Franzosen. Spricht man zu ihnen, so übersetzen sie alles in ihre eigene Sprache, und so wird es alsobald etwas ganz anderes. Mathematicians are a kind of Frenchmen. Whenever you say anything or talk to them, they translate it into their own language, and right away it is something completely different.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Art, Men, Say Anything

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