Quotes from Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Two souls, alas, are housed within my breast, And each will wrestle for the mastery there.

Every day I observe more and more the folly of judging of others by ourselves; and I have so much trouble with myself, and my own heart is in such constant agitation, that I am well content to let others pursue their own course, if they only allow me the same privilege.

One can stand anything except a succession of ordinary days.

Be above it! Make the world serve your purpose, but do not serve it!

He is happiest, be he king or peasant, who finds peace in his home.

The highest goal that man can achieve is amazement.

In happy ignorance, I sighed for a world I did not know, where I hoped to find every pleasure and enjoyment which my heart could desire; and now, on my return from that wide world... how many disappointed hopes and unsuccessful plans have I brought back!

We all of us live upon the past, and through the past we are destroyed.

There is no past we can bring back by longing for it. There is only an eternal now that builds and creates out of the past something new and better.

How often do I lull my seething blood to rest, for you have never seen anything so unsteady, so uncertain, as this heart.

Must it ever be thus-that the source of our happiness must also be the fountain of our misery? The full and ardent sentiment which animated my heart with the love of nature, overwhelming me with a torrent of delight, and which brought all paradise before me, has now become an insupportable torment, a demon which perpetually pursues and harrasses me.

What is the destiny of man, but to fill up the measure of his sufferings, and to drink his allotted cup of bitterness?

The heights charm us, but the steps do not; with the mountain in our view we love to walk the plains.

if only these treasures were not so fragile as they are precious and beautiful.

Every situation--nay, every moment--is of infinite worth; for it is the representative of a whole eternity.

For a man to achieve all that is demanded of him, he must regard himself as greater than he is.

A mans manners are a mirror in which he shows his portrait.

I examine my own being, and find there a world, but a world rather of imagination and dim desires, than of distinctness and living power. Then everything swims before my senses, and I smile and dream while pursuing my way through the world.

Wild dreams torment me as I lie. And though a god lives in my heart, though all my power waken at his word, though he can move my every inmost part - yet nothing in the outer world is stirred. thus by existence tortured and oppressed I crave for death, I long for rest.

Do not hurry; do not rest.

He who moves not forward, goes backward.

Man is not born to solve the problem of the universe, but to find out what he has to do; and to restrain himself within the limits of his comprehension.

Beware of her fair hair, for she excels All women in the magic of her locks; And when she winds them round a young man's neck, She will not ever set him free again.

Nothing can be compared to the new life that the discovery of another country provides for a thoughtful person. Although I am still the same I believe to have changed to the bones.