Johann Wolfgang von Goethe - Love Quotes

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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
She loves herself, and her innumerable eyes and affections are fixed upon herself. She has divided herself that she may be her own delight. She causes an endless succession of new capacities for enjoyment to spring up, that her insatiable sympathy may be assuaged.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
He loves not who does not see the faults of the beloved as virtues.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Her crown is love. Through love alone dare we come near her. She separates all existences, and all tend to intermingle. She has isolated all things in order that all may approach one another. She holds a couple of draughts from the cup of love to be fair payment for the pains of a lifetime.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
It would be foolish for a man not to believe in his mistress's love because she could not prove it to him mathematically. She can mathematically prove her dowry, but not her love.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Against great advantages in another, there are no means of defending ourselves except love.

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

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Children can scarcely be fashioned to meet with our likes and our purpose. Just as God did us give them, so must we hold them and love them, nurture and teach them to fullness and leave them to be what they are.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
She creates needs because she loves action. Wondrous! that she produces all this action so easily. Every need is a benefit, swiftly satisfied, swiftly renewed. Every fresh want is a new source of pleasure, but she soon reaches an equilibrium.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
A life without love, without the presence of the beloved, is nothing but a mere magic-lantern show. We draw out slide after slide, swiftly tiring of each, and pushing it back to make haste for the next.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
I love those who yearn for the impossible.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Who longs in solitude to live, Ah! soon his wish will gain: Men hope and love, men get and give, and leave him to his pain.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
First and last, what is demanded of genius is love of truth.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Love does not dominate, it cultivates. And that is more.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Flowers are the beautiful hieroglyphics of nature with which she indicates how much she loves us.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
We can't form our children on our own concepts; we must take them and love them as God gives them to us.

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 I love you, what business is it of yours?

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Just as, out of habit, one consults a run-down clock as though it were still going, so too one may look at the face of a beautiful woman as though she were still in love.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Pleasure and love are the pinions of great deeds.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
I hold to faith in the divine love — which, so many years ago for a brief moment in a little corner of the earth, walked about as a man bearing the name of Jesus Christ — as the foundation on which alone my happiness rests.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
How fair doth Nature
Appear again!
How bright the sunbeams!
How smiles the plain!
The flow'rs are bursting
From ev'ry bough,
And thousand voices
Each bush yields now.
And joy and gladness
Fill ev'ry breast!
Oh earth!-oh sunlight!
Oh rapture blest!
Oh love! oh loved one!

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
I'm gazing at church and palace, ruin and column,
Like a serious man making sensible use of a journey,
But soon it will happen, and all will be one vast temple,
Love's temple, receiving its new initiate.
Though you're a whole world, Rome, still, without Love,
The world isn't the world, and Rome can't be Rome.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
He who doesn't see his lover's faults as virtues is not in love.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
The first and last thing demanded of genius is love of truth.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
A great deal may be done by severity, more by love, but most by clear discernment and impartial justice.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
I feel I'm happily inspired now on Classical soil:
The Past and Present speak louder, more charmingly.
Here, as advised, I leaf through the works of the Ancients
With busy hands, and, each day, with fresh delight.
But at night Love keeps me busy another way:
I become half a scholar but twice as contented.
And am I not learning, studying the shape
Of her lovely breasts: her hips guiding my hand?

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
I nothing had, and yet enough for youth—Joy in Illusion, ardent thirst for Truth. Give unrestrained, the old emotion, The bliss that touched the verge of pain, The strength of Hate, Love's deep devotion,—O, give me back my youth again!

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