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.

If I love you, what business is it of yours?

That is the true season of love, when we believe that we alone can love, that no one could ever have loved so before us, and that no one will love in the same way as us.

We are shaped and fashioned by what we love.

A person is never happy till their vague strivings has itself marked out its proper limitations.

Each has his own happiness in his hands, as the artist handles the rude clay he seeks to reshape it into a figure; yet it is the same with this art as with all others: only the capacity for it is innate; the art itself must be learned and painstakingly practiced.

Nine keys to contentment Health enough to make work a pleasure. Wealth enough to support your needs. Strength enough to battle with difficulties and overcome them. Grace enough to confess your sins and forsake them. Patience enough to toil until some good is accomplished. Charity enough to see some good in your neighbors. Love enough to move you to be useful and helpful to others. Faith enough to make real things of God. Hope enough to remove all anxious fears concerning the future.

The highest happiness of man . . . is to have probed what is knowable and quietly to revere what is unknowable.

What makes people happy is activity; changing evil itself into good by power, working in a God like manner.

Belief is not the beginning of knowledge, it is the end.

It is not enough to have knowledge, one must also apply it. It is not enough to have wishes, one must also accomplish.

No one has ever learned fully to know themselves.

Self-knowledge comes from knowing other men.

What is not fully understood is not possessed.

Take care of your body with steadfast fidelity. The soul must see through these eyes alone, and if they are dim, the whole world is clouded.

Character develops itself in the stream of life.

Genius develops in quiet places , Character out in the full current of human life.

Men show their character in nothing more clearly than by what they think laughable.

Talent develops in tranquility, character in the full current of human life.

Talent is nurtured in solitude; character is formed in the stormy billows of the world.

The right man is the one who seizes the moment.

The sagacious reader who is capable of reading between these lines what does not stand written in them, but is nevertheless implied, will be able to form some conception.