Quotes Johann Wolfgang von Goethe - page 10
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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.
Life seems so vulgar, so easily content with the commonplace things of every day, and yet it always nurses and cherishes certain higher claims in secret, and looks about for the means of satisfying them.
Lose this day loitering 'Twill be the same old story, Tomorrow and the next, Even more dilatory. Whatever you would do, Or dream of doing, begin it! Boldness has power, genius, and magic in it. Begin it now.
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To blow is not to play on the flute; you must move the fingers.
[Ger., Blasen ist nicht floten, ihr musst die Finger bewegen.]
Our hands we open of our own free will, and the good flies, which we can never recall.
No one knows what he is doing so long as he is acting rightly; but of what is wrong one is always conscious.
I had rather be Mercury, the smallest among seven [planets], revolving round the sun, than the first among five [moons] revolving round Saturn.
None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free.
To think is easy. To act is hard. But the hardest thing in the world is to act in accordance with your thinking.
The worst is that the very hardest thinking will not bring thoughts. They must come like good children of God and cry, "Here we are." You expend effort and energy thinking hard. Then, after you have given up, they come sauntering in with their hands in their pockets. If the effort had not been made to open the door, however, who knows when they could have come.
Whatever liberates our spirit, without also giving us mastery over ourselves, is destructive.
Yes! to this thought I hold with firm persistence;
The last result of wisdom stamps it true;
He only earns his freedom and existence
Who daily conquers them anew.
This is the highest wisdom that I own; freedom and life are earned by those alone who conquer them each day anew.
He only earns his freedom and his life Who takes them every day by storm.
I always had an aversion to your apostles of freedom; each but sought for himself freedom to do what he liked.
Only law can give us freedom.
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To be active is the primary vocation of man.
