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A man does not need to have seen or experienced everything himself. But if he is to commit himself to another's experiences and his way of putting them, let him consider that he has to do with three things—the object in question and two subjects.

A man does not need to have seen or experienced everything himself. But if he is to commit himself to another's experiences and his way of putting them, let him consider that he has to do with three things—the object in question and two subjects.

Approximate author period: c. 1790 AD · early modern

Meaning not yet available

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Attribution & collection notes
Author or tradition
Goethe
Attribution: attributed
Country attributed
Not established
A country attribution does not establish the earliest origin.
Historical period
Approximate author period: c. 1790 AD · early modern
author lifetime midpoint (1749–1832); not quotation composition date
An author lifetime, approximate period or collection date is not necessarily the date when these words were first written or spoken.
Recorded source
Maxims and Reflections (1906) (1906 AD)

Printed maxim 556; Bailey Saunders English translation, New York: The Macmillan Company,1906

A collection's publication date can be later than the words it records.

The voice behind the words.

Goethe: Painted portrait, 1828

Listed in the author section of Bartlett’s ninth-edition anthology, in the linked 1905 printing. Dates reflect that historical edition and may differ from modern scholarship.

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