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The divine power of the love, of which we cease not to sing and speak, is this, that it reproduces every moment the grand qualities of the beloved object, perfect in the smallest parts, embraced in the whole; it rests not either by day or by night, is ravished with its own work, wonders at its own stirring activity, finds the well-known always new, because it is every moment begotten anew in the sweetest of all occupations. In fact the image of the beloved one cannot become old, for every moment is the hour of its birth.
The divine power of the love, of which we cease not to sing and speak, is this, that it reproduces every moment the grand qualities of the beloved object, perfect in the smallest parts, embraced in the whole; it rests not either by day or by night, is ravished with its own work, wonders at its own stirring activity, finds the well-known always new, because it is every moment begotten anew in the sweetest of all occupations. In fact the image of the beloved one cannot become old, for every moment is the hour of its birth.
Approximate author period: c. 1790 AD · early modern
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- Author or tradition
- Goethe
Attribution: attributed - Country attributed
- Not established
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- Approximate author period: c. 1790 AD · early modern
author lifetime midpoint (1749–1832)
An author lifetime, approximate period or collection date is not necessarily the date when these words were first written or spoken. - Recorded source
- Dictionary of Quotations (1893) (1893 AD)
Printed citation: Goethe. · page_424
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The voice behind the words.
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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