Goethe Werther Quotes & Sayings

It is not necessary to read all of Goethe or all of Kant, it is not necessary to read all of Schopenhauer; a few pages of Werther, a few pages of Elective Affinities and we know more in the end about the two books than if we had read them from beginning to end, which would anyway deprive us of the purest enjoyment. — Thomas Bernhard

The whole of experience is like a cryptograph, and philosophy is like the deciphering of it. — Arthur Schopenhauer

Envy among other ingredients has a mixture of the love of justice in it. We are more angry at undeserved than at deserved good-fortune. — William Hazlitt

Whatever Romney's failings, he certainly doesn't suggest that the United States is teetering on the brink of a moral cesspool. — John Podhoretz

I really wanted to take her photo, so I walked up to the nearest adult and asked, 'Does she belong to you?' Suddenly the music stopped, and I heard: 'I belong to myself! — Brandon Stanton

Everyone has seen photographs of Mexicans wearing those big sombreros. When you come to Mexico, the astonishing thing is, nobody wears these hats at all. — Bruce Beresford

Oh, how often have I cursed those foolish pages of mine which made my youthful sufferings public property! Goethe wrote years after the publication of The Sorrows of Young Werther. — Maggie Nelson

Yesterday, when I took leave she seized me by the hand, and
said, "Adieu, dear Werther." Dear Werther! It was the first
time she ever called me dear: the sound sunk deep into my
heart. I have repeated it a hundred times; and last night, on
going to bed, and talking to myself of various things, I suddenly
said, "Good night, dear Werther!" and then could not
but laugh at myself. — Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

This is another one of those creatures whom, like the pelican, I have fed with the blood of my own heart ... There were special circumstances close at hand, urgent, troubling me, and they resulted in the state of mind that produced Werther. I had lived, loved, and suffered much ... That's what it was. — Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

Ah, how often I've cursed those foolish pages,
That showed my youthful sufferings to everyone!
If Werther had been my brother, and I'd killed him,
His sad ghost could hardly have persecuted me more. — Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

I turned my face away. She should not act thus. She ought
not to excite my imagination with such displays of heavenly
innocence and happiness, nor awaken my heart from its slumbers,
in which it dreams of the worthlessness of life! — Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

In 1862, the Scottish mathematician James Clerk Maxwell developed a set of fundamental equations that unified electricity and magnetism. On his deathbed, he coughed up a strange sort of confession, declaring that "something within him" discovered the famous equations, not he. He admitted he had no idea how ideas actually came to him - they simply came to him. William Blake related a similar experience, reporting of his long narrative poem Milton: "I have written this poem from immediate dictation twelve or sometimes twenty lines at a time without premeditation and even against my will." Johann Wolfgang von Goethe claimed to have written his novella The Sorrows of Young Werther with practically no conscious input, as though he were holding a pen that moved on its own. — David Eagleman

It is little wonder then that the term "religious" is often a pejorative one indicating an escapist, self-righteous, other-worldly or perhaps superstitious stance toward life. Nor should this come as any surprise, in light of all we have been saying of the pervasiveness of the false self. Since religion deals with the ultimate realities of life, it is understandable that religion would draw out the ultimate in the false self's basic disorientation and blindness. The false self can have but false gods, all of which in the end turn out to be but reflections of the false self as it worships itself and sets itself up as the reason for its own existence. — James Finley

I'm sure I've confused him with my request, but I want him to kiss me. And I want a real kiss, not a friend kiss. I'm still committed to the friends-only agreement, but sometimes a girl just wants a damn kiss. Is that so wrong? — Allie Everhart

The continent is incredibly exciting. When I first went there, it consumed me, and I instantly felt like I wanted to be engaged one way or the other, whether on a philanthropic level or business. I'm lucky to say today that I do both. In terms of African Wildlife Foundation, I started working with them roughly around 2009, on the ambassador level. Then I joined the board and was exposed to deeper issues that the Foundation was combating on the continent. — Veronika Varekova

The joy of accomplishment is the greatest joy there is. — R. G. LeTourneau

ONE HUNDRED TIMES have I been on the point of embracing
her. Heavens! what a torment it is to see so much loveliness
passing and repassing before us, and yet not dare to lay hold
of it! And laying hold is the most natural of human instincts.
Do not children touch everything they see? — Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

Nothing is more dangerous than solitude. — Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe