Johann Wolfgang von Goethe - The Sorrows of Young Werther (1774)

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The human race is a monotonous affair. Most people spend the greatest part of their time working in order to live, and what little freedom remains so fills them with fear that they seek out any and every means to be rid of it.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
A human being needs only a small plot of ground on which to be happy, and even less to lie beneath.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
He is a man whom it is impossible to please, because he is never pleased with himself.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
The affairs of the world are no more than so much trickery, and a man who toils for money or honour or whatever else in deference to the wishes of others, rather than because his own desire or needs lead him to do so, will always be a fool.

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

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
No one is willing to believe that adults too, like children, wander about this earth in a daze and, like children, do not know where they come from or where they are going, act as rarely as they do according to genuine motives, and are as thoroughly governed as they are by biscuits and cake and the rod.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
The flowers of life are but illusions. How many fade away and leave no trace.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
They should be ashamed of themselves, all these sober people!

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
The man who occupies the first place seldom plays the principal part.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
We are so constituted that we believe the most incredible things; and, once they are engraved upon the memory, woe to him who would endeavor to erase them.

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
When she sees the leaves fall, they raise no other idea in her mind than that winter is approaching.

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 you know me and my destiny only too well, you probably also know what attracts me to all unfortunate people.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
If you inquire what the people are like here,
I must answer, "The same as everywhere!"

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Say what you will of fortitude, but show me the man who can patiently endure the laughter of fools when they have obtained an advantage over him. 'Tis only when their nonsense is without foundation that one can suffer it without complaint.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
[…] misunderstandings and neglect create more confusion in this world than trickery and malice. At any rate, the last two are certainly much less frequent.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
I have so much in me, and the feeling for her absorbs it all; I have so much, and without her it all comes to nothing.

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
We often feel that we lack something, and seem to see that very quality in someone else, promptly attributing all our own qualities to him too, and a kind of ideal contentment as well. And so the happy mortal is a model of complete perfection—which we have ourselves created.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
If only these treasures were not so fragile as they are precious and beautiful.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe