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And I Like Those Authors Best Whose Scenes Describe My Own Situation In Life-- And The Friends Who Are About Me Whose Stories Touch Me With Interest, From Resembling My Own Homely Existence.

-Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

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And I Like Those

Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

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And I Like Those Authors Best Whose Scenes Describe My Own Situation In Life-- And The Friends Who Are About Me Whose Stories Touch Me With Interest, From Resembling My Own Homely Existence.

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Situations In Life

More From Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

It Is The Strange Fate Of Man, That Even In The Greatest Of Evils The Fear Of The Worst Continues To Haunt Him.

The Threshold Is The Place Of Expectation.

Is It Not Enough That We Cannot Make One Another Happy, Must We Also Rob One Another Of The Pleasures That Any Heart May Permit Itself Now And Then? And Name Me A Person Who In A Bad Mood Will Be Decent Enough To Hide It, To Bear It Alone, Without Destroying The Joy Around Him. Is It Not Rather An Inner Dissatisfaction With Our Own Unworthiness, A Dislike Of Ourselves That Is Always Associated With Envy Aggravated By Foolish Conceit? We See People Happy And Not Made Happy By Us, And That Is Unbearable.

Whoso Shrinks From Ideas Ends By Having Nothing But Sensations.

The Heights Charm Us, But The Steps Do Not; With The Mountain In Our View We Love To Walk The Plains.

Nature! We Live In Her Midst And Know Her Not. She Is Incessantly Speaking To Us, But Betrays Not Her Secret. We Constantly Act Upon Her, And Yet Have No Power Over Her. Variant: Nature! We Are Surrounded And Embraced By Her: Powerless To Separate Ourselves From Her, And Powerless To Penetrate Beyond Her.

Sound And Sufficient Reason Falls, After All, To The Share Of But Few Men, And Those Few Men Exert Their Influence In Silence.

There Are Only Two Lasting Bequests We Can Hope To Give Our Children. One Of These Is Roots, The Other, Wings.

Every Individual Who Is Not Creative Has A Negative, Narrow, Exclusive Taste And Succeeds In Depriving Creative Being Of Its Energy And Life.

A Man's Name Is Not Like A Mantle Which Merely Hangs About Him...but A Perfectly Fitting Garment, Which, Like The Skin, Has Grown Over Him, At Which One Cannot Rake And Scrape Without Injuring The Man Himself.

Ill-humor Is Nothing More Than An Inward Feeling Of Our Own Want Of Merit, A Dissatisfaction With Ourselves Which Is Always United With An Envy That Foolish Vanity Excites.

We Eagerly Get Hold Of A Law That Serves As A Weapon To Our Passions.

Patriotism Ruins History.

When Translating One Must Proceed Up To The Intranslatable; Only Then One Becomes Aware Of The Foreign Nation And The Foreign Tongue.

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.

Too Many Parents Make Life Hard For Their Children By Trying, Too Zealously, To Make It Easy For Them.

Ingratitude Is Always A Kind Of Weakness. I Have Never Known Men Of Ability To Be Ungrateful.

A Noble Person Attracts Noble People, And Knows How To Hold On To Them.

Let Us Not Dream That Reason Can Ever Be Popular. Passions, Emotions, May Be Made Popular; But Reason Remains Ever The Property Of An Elect Few.

A Phenomenon Like Mozart Remains An Inexplicable Thing.

A Lot Of People Do Not Care About Your Money Until Nearly Penniless. They Also Do So With Time

A Genuine Work Of Art Usually Displeases At First Sight, As It Suggests A Deficiency In The Spectator.

What Is Part Of You, You Cannot Get Rid Of, Even If You Were To Throw It Away.

Only He Who Finds Empiricism Irksome Is Driven To Method.

Behavior Is A Mirror In Which Every One Shows His Image. [ger., Das Betragen Ist Ein Spiegel In Welchem Jeder Sein Bild Zeigt.]

Let Mental Culture Go On Advancing, Let The Natural Sciences Progress In Even Greater Extent And Depth, And The Human Mind Widen Itself As Much As It Desires: Beyond The Elevation And Moral Culture Of Christianity, As It Shines Forth In The Gospels, It Will Not Go.

It Is In The Half Fools And The Half Wise That The Greatest Danger Lies.

The People Who Are Absent Are The Ideal; Those Who Are Present Seem To Be Quite Commonplace.

One Must Be Something, In Order To Do Something.

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.

Faith Is Hidden Household Capital.

People Have A Peculiar Pleasure In Making Converts, That Is, In Causing Others To Enjoy What They Enjoy, Thus Finding Their Own Likeness Represented And Reflected Back To Them.

If A Man Writes A Book, Let Him Set Down Only What He Knows. I Have Guesses Enough Of My Own.

For That Is Love's Nature That It Lays Claim To Exclusive Right And That All Other Claims Are Nil.

Every Man Has Enough Power Left To Carry Out That Of Which He Is Convinced.

We All Of Us Live Upon The Past, And Through The Past We Are Destroyed.

One Can Be Instructed In Society, One Is Inspired Only In Solitude.

Presents At Once? That's Good. He Is Sure To Succeed.

Choose Well. Your Choice Is Brief, And Yet Endless.

The Spirit From Which We Act Is The Principal Matter.

Everyone Is Deceived In His Hopes, Cheated In His Expectations.

It Is Opposition That Makes Us Productive.

Lord Byron Is Only Great As A Poet; As Soon As He Reflects He Is A Child.

Too Rigid Scruples Are Concealed Pride.

Divide And Rule, The Politician Cries; Unite And Lead, Is Watchword Of The Wise.

Noble Be Man, Helpful And Good! For That Alone Sets Him Apart From Every Other Creature On Earth.

Care Is Taken That Trees Do Not Grow Into The Sky.

A Man Does Not Mind Being Blamed For His Faults, And Being Punished For Them, And He Patiently Suffers Much For Them; But He Becomes Impatient If He Is Required To Give Them Up.

All Theory, My Friend, Is Grey, But Green Is Life's Glad Golden Tree.

Colour Itself Is A Degree Of Darkness.

I Wish The Stage Were As Narrow As The Wire Of A Tighrope Dancer So That No Incompetent Would Dare Step Upon It.

What Is My Life If I Am No Longer Useful To Others.

Every Idea Appears At First As A Strange Visitor, And When It Begins To Be Realized, It Is Hardly Distinguishable From Fantasy.

Hatred Is Active, And Envy Passive Dislike; There Is But One Step From Envy To Hate.

English Plays, Atrocious In Content, Absurd In Form, Objectionable In Action, Execrable Englishtheatre.

Necessity Is Cruel, But It Is The Only Test Of Inward Strength. Every Fool May Live According To His Own Likings.

A Well-bred Carriage Is Difficult To Imitate; For In Strictness It Is Negative, And It Implies A Long-continued Previous Training.

When Two People Are Really Happy About One Another One Can Generally Assume They Are Mistaken.

Error Is Acceptable As Long As We Are Young; But One Must Not Drag It Along Into Old Age.

Reason Can Never Be Popular. Passions And Feelings May Become Popular, But Reason Will Always Remain The Sole Property Of A Few Eminent Individuals.

Hatred Is A Heavy Burden. It Sinks The Heart Deep In The Breast, And Lies Like A Tombstone On All Joys.

If Children Grew Up According To Early Indications, We Should Have Nothing But Geniuses.

What One Doesn't Understand One Doesn't Possess.

From Inaccessible Mountain Range By Way Of Desert Untrod By Human Foot To The Ends Of The Unknown Seas, The Breath Of The Everlasting Creative Spirit Is Felt, Rejoicing Over Every Speck Of Dust That Hearkens To It And Lives.

Mountain Ranges

True Happiness Springs From Moderation. [ger., Aus Massigkeit Entspringt Ein Reines Gluck.]

Man Cannot Persist Long In A Conscious State, He Must Throw Himself Back Into The Unconscious, For His Root Lives There.

The Church Alone Beyond All Question Has For Ill-gotten Goods The Right Digestion.

One Is Led Astray Alike By Sympathy And Coldness, By Praise And By Blame

Since I Have Heard Often Enough That Everyone In The End Has His Own Religion, Nothing Seemed More Natural To Me Than To Fashion My Own.

Mysteries Are Not Necessarily Miracles.

No Two Men See The World Exactly Alike, And Different Temperaments Will Apply In Different Ways A Principle That They Both Acknowledge.

America, You Have It Better Than Our Continent, The Old One.

There Is Nothing So Terrible As Activity Without Insight.

Humans Fear Reason, But They Ought To Fear Stupidity- For Reason Can Be Hard, But Stupidity Can Be Fatal.

How Many Years Must A Man Do Nothing, Before He Can At All Know What Is To Be Done And How To Do It!

Character, In Great And Little Things, Means Carrying Through What You Feel Able To Do.

Love Does Not Rule; But It Trains, And That Is More.

All That Is Transitory Is But A Metaphor.

The Greatest Act Of Faith Takes Place When A Man Finally Decides That He Is Not God.

Some People Spend The Day In Complaining Of A Headache, And The Night In Drinking The Wine That Gives It.

What Men Usually Say Of Misfortunes, That They Never Come Alone, May With Equal Truth Be Said Of Good Fortune; Nay, Of Other Circumstances Which Gather Round Us In A Harmonious Way, Whether It Arise From A Kind Of Fatality, Or That Man Has The Power Of Attracting To Himself Things That Are Mutually Related.

Everything Is Simpler Than One Can Imagine, And Yet Complicated And Inter-twined Beyond Comprehension.

I Will Be Lord Over Myself.

It Is Not Given To Us To Grasp The Truth, Which Is Identical With The Divine, Directly. We Perceive It Only In Reflection, In Example And Symbol, In Singular And Related Appearances. It Meets Us As A Kind Of Life Which Is Incomprehensible To Us, And Yet We Cannot Free Ourselves From The Desire To Comprehend It.

A State Of Affairs Which Leads To Daily Vexation Is Not The Right State.

Nature Is, After All, The Only Book That Offers Important Content On Every Page.

Talent Is Nurtured In Solitude; Character Is Formed In The Stormy Billows Of The World. [ger., Es Bildet Ein Talent Sich In Der Stille, Sich Ein Charakter In Dem Strom Der Welt.]

I Hold To Faith In The Divine Love - Which, So Many Years Ago For A Brief Moment In A Little Corner Of The Earth, Walked About As A Man Bearing The Name Of Jesus Christ - As The Foundation On Which Alone My Happiness Rests.

We're Only Really Thinking When We Can't Think Out Fully What We Are Really Thinking About!

Do Thine Own Task, And Be Therewith Content.

A Man's Errors Are What Make Him Amiable.

Writing Is Busy Idleness.

We Will Burn That Bridge When We Come To It.

Very Few People Love Others For What They Are; Rather, They Love What They Lend Them, Their Own Selves, Their Own Idea Of Them.

Art Will Always Be Art.

Every Day Look At A Beautiful Picture, Read A Beautiful Poem, Listen To Some Beautiful Music, And If Possible, Say Some Reasonable Thing.

Wine Rejoices The Heart Of Man And Joy Is The Mother Of All Virtues.

A Man Is Not Little When He Finds It Difficult To Cope With Circumstances, But When Circumstances Overmaster Him.

The Greatest Difficulties Lie Where We Are Not Looking For Them.

When I Say To The Moment Flying; 'linger A While -- Thou Art So Fair!' Then Bind Me In Thy Bonds Undying, And My Final Ruin I Will Bear!

True Happiness Springs From Moderation.

Ye Great Teachers: Listen To What You Say!

If We Take People Only As They Are, Then We Make Them Worse; If We Treat Them As If They Were What They Should Be, Then We Bring Them To Where They Can Be Brought.

We Are Shaped And Fashioned By What We Love.- Henry Ward Beecher - I Never Knew How To Worship Until I Knew How To Love.

Our Passions Are True Phoenixes; As The Old Burn Out The New Straight Rise Up From The Ashes.

The Really Unhappy Person Is The One Who Leaves Undone What They Can Do, And Starts Doing What They Don't Understand; No Wonder They Come To Grief.

Know Thyself? If I Knew Myself I Would Run Away.

On The Pinnacle Of Success Man Does Not Stand Firm Long.

Rash Combat Oft Immortalizes Man; If He Should Fall, He Is Renowned In Song; But After-ages Reckon Not The Ceaseless Tears Which The Forsaken Woman Sheds. Poets Tell Us Not Of The Many Nights Consumed In Weeping, Or Of The Dreary Days Wherein Her Anguished Soul Vainly Yearns To Call Her Loved One Back.

I Look Upon All Four Gospels As Thoroughly Genuine, For There Shines Forth From Them The Reflected Splendor Of A Sublimity Proceeding From Jesus Christ.

People Of Uncommon Abilities Generally Fall Into Eccentricities When Their Sphere Of Life Is Not Adequate To Their Abilities.

Everything Is Hard Before It Is Easy.

The Older We Get The More We Must Limit Ourselves If We Wish To Be Active.

Beware Of A Man Of One Book.

What In Us The Women Leave Uncultivated, Children Cultivate When We Retain Them Near Us.

Nothing Is More Odious Than The Majority, For It Consists Of A Few Powerful Leaders, A Certain Number Of Accommodating Scoundrels And Submissive Weaklings, And A Mass Of Men Who Trot After Them Without Thinking, Or Knowing Their Own Minds.

Everything Is Simpler Than You Think And At The Same Time More Complex Than You Imagine

A Useless Life Is An Early Death.

A Good Man, Through Obscurest Aspirations Has Still An Instinct Of The One True Way.

Each Indecision Brings Its Own Delays And Days Are Lost Lamenting Over Lost Days... What You Can Do Or Think You Can Do, Begin It. For Boldness Has Magic, Power, And Genius In It.

Thank God When He Oppresses You, And Again When He Releases You.

To Like Things Like, Whatever One May Ail; There Is Certain Help.

Is Not The Core Of Nature In The Heart Of Man?

There Is A Great Difference, Whether The Poet Seeks The Particular For The Sake Of The General Or Sees The General In The Particular. From The Former Procedure There Ensues Allegory, In Which The Particular Serves Only As Illustration, As Example Of The General. The Latter Procedure, However, Is Genuinely The Nature Of Poetry; It Expresses Something Particular, Without Thinking Of The General Or Pointing To It.

If We Are Out Of Synch With Ourselves, Everything Is Out Of Synch For Us.

If You Start To Think Of Your Physical And Moral Condition, You Usually Find That You Are Sick.

The Most Fortunate Of Men, Be He A King Or Commoner, Is He Whose Welfare Is Assured In His Own Home.

Hold Your Powers Together For Something Good And Let Everything Go That Is For You Without Result And Is Not Suited To You.

There Are But Two Roads That Lead To An Important Goal And To The Doing Of Great Things: Strength And Perseverance. Strength Is The Lot Of But A Few Privileged Men; But Austere Perseverance, Harsh And Continuous, May Be Employed By The Smallest Of Us And Rarely Fails Of Its Purpose, For Its Silent Power Grows Irresistibly Greater With Time.

There Is No Permanence In Doubt; It Incites The Mind To Closer Inquiry And Experiment, From Which, If Rightly Managed, Certainty Proceeds, And In This Alone Can Man Find Thorough Satisfaction.

Talent Develops In Quiet, Alone; Character Is Sharpened In The Torrent Of The World.

Fresh Activity Is The Only Means Of Overcoming Adversity.

True Works Of Art Contain Their Own Theory And Give Us The Measurement According To Which We Should Judge Them.

If I Say To The Moment: 'stay Now! You Are So Beautiful'!

We Can Always Redeem The Man Who Aspires And Strives.

The Phrases That Men Hear Or Repeat Continually, End By Becoming Convictions And Ossify The Organs Of Intelligence.

One Mind Is Enough For A Thousand Hands.

The Mark Of Highest Originality Lies In The Ability To Develop A Familiar Idea So Fruitfully That It Would Seem No One Else Would Ever Have Discovered So Much To Be Hidden In It.

Blood Is A Very Special Juice.

If You Have Science And Art, You Also Have Religion; But If You Don't Have Them, You Better Have Religion.

The Sea Is Flowing Ever, The Land Retains It Never.

While Man's Desires And Aspirations Stir He Cannot Choose But Err.

Mastery Is Proven Only In Limitation, And Law Alone Can Give Us Freedom.

Love, Whose Power Youth Feels, Is Not Suitable For The Elderly, Just As Little As Anything That Presupposes Productivity. It Is Rare That Productivity Lasts Through The Years.

It Is Delivery That Makes The Orators Success.

A Creation Of Importance Can Only Be Produced When Its Author Isolates Himself, It Is A Child Of Solitude.

Of The Book Of Books Most Wondrous Is The Tender Book Of Love.

This World Could Not Exist If It Were Not So Simple. The Ground Has Been Tilled A Thousand Years, Yet Its Powers Remain Ever The Same; A Little Rain, A Little Sun, And Each Spring It Grows Green Again.

He Who Is Wise Puts Aside All Claims Which May Dissipate His Attention, And Confining Himself To One Branch Excels In That.

The Rich Want Good Wine, The Poor, Plenty Of Wine

Wer Fremde Sprachen Nicht Kennt, Weiss Nichts Von Seiner Eigenen.he Who Is Ignorant Of Foreign Languages, Knows Not His Own.

Foreign Language

No Skill Or Art Is Needed To Grow Old; The Trick Is To Endure It.

It Matters Little Whether A Man Be Mathematically Or Philologically Or Artistically Cultivated, So He Be But Cultivated.

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.

Experience Is Only Half Of Experience.

For The Nature Of A Women Is Closely Allied To Art. [ger., Denn Das Naturell Der Frauen Ist So Nah Mit Kunst Verwandt.]

Shakespeare Is Dangerous To Young Poets; They Cannot But Reproduce Him, While They Fancy That They Produce Themselves.

Nothing Is More Fearful Than Imagination Without Taste.

One Should Not Wish Anyone Disagreeable Conditions Of Life; But For Him Who Is Involved In Them By Chance, They Are Touchstones Of Characters And Of The Most Decisive Value To Man.

We Are Pantheists As Natural Scientists, Polytheists As Poets, And Monotheists As Moral Beings.

Whoso Is Content With Pure Experience And Acts Upon It Has Enough Of Truth.

Since Time Is Not A Person We Can Overtake When He Is Gone, Let Us Honor Him With Mirth And Cheerfulness Of Heart While He Is Passing.

It Would Not Be Worth Your While To Reach The Age Of Seventy If All The Wisdom Of The World Were To Be Foolishness Before God.

Writing History Is A Method Of Getting Rid Of The Past.

Who Strives Always To The Utmost, Him Can We Save.

Wisdom Is Found Only In Truth.

Great Passions Are Incurable Diseases.

Incurable Disease

The Rogue Has Everywhere The Advantage.

All Theory, Dear Friend, Is Gray, But The Golden Tree Of Life Springs Ever Green.

Limitation Of Aims Is The Mother Of Wisdom And The Secret Of Achievement.

Every Man Must Form Himself As A Particular Being, Seeking, However, To Attain That General Idea Of Which All Mankind Are Constituents.

If Ever The Divine Appeared On Earth, It Was In The Person Of Christ.

It Is So Hard That One Cannot Really Have Confidence In Doctors And Yet Cannot Do Without Them.

Have Confidence

Treat People The Way They Are And They Will Stay That Way. Treat People The Way They Can Become And They Will Become That Way.

Whatever Necessity Lays Upon Thee, Endure; Whatever She Commands, Do.

Properly Speaking, We Learn From Those Books Only That We Cannot Judge. The Author Of A Book That I Am Competent To Criticise Would Have To Learn From Me.

Children, Like Dogs, Have So Sharp And Fine A Scent That They Detect And Hunt Out Everything--the Bad Before All The Rest. They Also Know Well Enough How This Or That Friend Stands With Their Parents; And As They Practice No Dissimulation Whatever, They Serve As Excellent Barometers By Which To Observe The Degree Of Favor Or Disfavor At Which We Stand With Their Parents.

Rest Not Life Is Sweeping By Go And Dare Before You Die. Something Mighty And Sublime, Leave Behind To Conquer Time.

Traveling Is Like Gambling: It Is Always Connected With Winning And Losing And Generally Where It Is Least Expected We Receive, More Or Less Than What We Hoped For.

The Evil One Has Left, The Evil Ones Remain. [ger., Den Bosen Sind Sie Los, Die Bosen Sind Geblieben.]

A Distracted Existence Leads Us To No Goal

What We Do Not Understand We Do Not Possess.

Woe To Falsehood! It Affords No Relief To The Breast, Like Truth; It Gives Us No Comfort, Pains Him Who Forges It, And Like An Arrow Directed By A God Flies Back And Wounds The Archer.

Thought Expands, But Paralyzes; Action Animates, But Narrows.

Mastery Passes Often For Egotism.

Who Can Think Wise Or Stupid Things At All That Were Not Thought Already In The Past.

What Is Uttered From The Heart Alone, Will Win The Hearts Of Others To Your Own.

That Which Thy Fathers Have Bequeathed To Thee, Earn It Anew If Thou Wouldst Possess It.

The Trouble Is Small, The Fun Is Great. [ger., Die Muh'ist Klein, Der Spass Ist Gross.]

Beauty Can Never Really Understand Itself.

Night Is The Other Half Of Life, And The Better Half.

What Do People Mean When They Talk About Unhappiness? It Is Not So Much Unhappiness As Impatience That From Time To Time Possesses Men, And Then They Choose To Call Themselves Miserable.

Our Friends Show Us What We Can Do; Our Enemies Teach Us What We Must Do.

Man Can Only Endure A Certain Degree Of Unhappiness; What Is Beyond That Either Annihilates Him Or Passes By Him And Leaves Him Apathetic

So Then The Year Is Repeating Its Old Story Again. We Are Come Once More, Thank God! To Its Most Charming Chapter. The Violets And The Mayflowers Are As Its Inscriptions Or Vignettes. It Always Makes A Pleasant Impression On Us, When We Open Again At These Pages Of The Book Of Life.

If You Don't Feel It, You'll Never Achieve It.

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.

To Have Seen Italy Without Having Seen Sicily Is To Not Have Seen Italy At All, For Sicily Is The Clue To Everything.

Action Has Magic, Grace And Power In It.

Truth Is A Torch, But A Huge One, And So It Is Only With Blinking Eyes What We All Of Us Try To Get Past It, In Actual Terror Of Being Burnt.

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