Johann Wolfgang von Goethe - Heart Quotes

24 Sourced Quotes

View all Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Quotes
Happy is it, indeed, for me that my heart is capable of feeling the same simple and innocent pleasure as the peasant whose table is covered with food of his own rearing, and who not only enjoys his meal, but remembers with delight the happy days and sunny mornings when he planted it, the soft evenings when he watered it, and the pleasure he experienced in watching its daily growth.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
There is a politeness of the heart; this is closely allied to love.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
What makes poetry? A full heart, brimful of one noble passion.
Variant translation: I feel what makes the poet, a full heart, filled entirely with one emotion

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
The first look at the world, by the mind's eye, as well as by the bodily organs of vision, conveys no distinct impression, either to our heads or to our hearts. We see things without perceiving them, and it takes a long time before we learn to understand the things we see.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Mere communion with nature, mere contact with the free air, exercise a soothing yet strengthening influence on the wearied spirit, calm the storm of passion, and soften the heart when shaken by sorrow to its inmost depths.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Wine rejoices the heart of man and joy is the mother of all virtues.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
The fate of the architect is the strangest of all. How often he expends his whole soul, his whole heart and passion, to produce buildings into which he himself may never enter.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
I treat my heart like a sick child and gratify its every fancy

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
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!

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
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.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
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.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Beloved, don't fret that you gave yourself so quickly!
Believe me, I don't think badly or wrongly of you.
The arrows of Love are various: some scratch us,
And our hearts suffer for years from their slow poison.
But others strong-feathered with freshly sharpened points
Pierce to the marrow, and quickly inflame the blood.
In the heroic ages, when gods and goddesses loved,
Desire followed a look, and joy followed desire.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
If there is confusion in your head and in your heart, what more do you want! A man who no longer loves and no longer errs should have himself buried straight away.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Men who give way easily to tears are good. I have nothing to do with those who hearts are dry and who eyes are dry!

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Nothing puts me so completely out of patience as the utterance of a wretched commonplace when I am talking from my inmost heart.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
I have possessed that heart, that noble soul, in whose presence I seemed to be more than I really was, because I was all that I could be.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Such is the frailty of man that even where he makes the truest and most forcible impression in the memory, in the heart of his beloved, there also he must perish.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
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.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
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.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Age does not make us childish, as men tell,
It merely finds us children still at heart.
In German: Das Alter macht nicht kindisch, wie man spricht, Es findet uns nur noch als wahre Kinder.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Great thoughts and a pure heart, that is what we should ask from God.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
All the knowledge I possess everyone else can acquire, but my heart is all my own.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
A word spoken is a terrible thing when it suddenly utters what the heart has long allowed.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
It is quite beyond me how anyone can believe God speaks to us in books and stories. If the world does not directly reveal to us our relationship to it, if our hearts fail to tell us what we owe ourselves and others, we shall assuredly not learn it from books, which are at best designed but to give names to our errors.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe